


Autumn in Nantucket

by TheDevilWearsMiuMiu



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:53:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26290675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDevilWearsMiuMiu/pseuds/TheDevilWearsMiuMiu
Summary: After telling Lorelai about the pregnancy, Rory travels to Nantucket to inform Emily. Emily doesn't react quite as one would expect, as she attempts to improve her relationship with both her daughter and granddaughter, and reminisces about her early relationship with Richard.
Relationships: Emily Gilmore & Lorelai Gilmore, Emily Gilmore & Rory Gilmore, Emily Gilmore/Richard Gilmore, Rory Gilmore/Logan Huntzberger
Comments: 11
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

Her face is rounder, her cheeks tinted rosé. The olive colored dress with the daisy print looks lovely on her. I could never wear it, I suppose, but it’s perfect for her – still a young woman; a writer; somebody free.

It’s bohemian but in a sweet, somewhat girly way. She told me it was from Zara when I asked, and I had discretely looked at the stomach area when she had crossed the patio for her cardigan but could not tell for certain. Was she pregnant or had she just gained some weight?

Either way, it suited her well and she appeared both more lively and more at ease with herself than she had in a long while. 

“Do you want more tea?” I ask her, gesturing towards the lavender blend that I have taken to consuming in the evenings. It serves its purpose to both relax the body and warm it a little during the cool October evenings of Nantucket.

“Yes, please,” she nods eagerly and I cannot but smile. In so many ways, she’ll always be a little girl to me – polite but easy to excite. I couldn’t serve her mother anything but coffee, but I find that I don’t mind any of her quirks much these days. I’ll gladly drink coffee with her at 9pm, even if it means that I’ll spend half the night wide awake with a racing heart.

With age, sleep becomes both more important and less so. But Rory gratefully drinks from the delicate tea cup I hand her and contentedly returns to her third piece of blackberry pie. I take a bite from my second piece myself – I wouldn’t have indulged in a second piece after dinner in the past but that is another rule that does not matter anymore. There is nobody to see me but Rory and nobody left to please.

“There’s something that I have to tell you, grandma,” she nervously twirls the fork in her right hand. Pregnant, I think. “Go ahead, honey,” I tell her. Her eyes meet mine and there is no mistaking the fear and apprehension that make them shine. I certainly do not want her to feel that way towards me. 

“It’s alright, Rory,” I encourage her further. “I’m sure it’s not going to be as bad as you think right now.” “Oh, but it is!” she insists. “Rory, you and your mother mean the world to me and at this point in my life, I don’t think there is much that either of you could do or say that would truly shock me.”

“To be clear, that’s not because you have behaved so terribly in the past,” I wink at her. “But because I have grown tired of societal rules and expectations.”

My granddaughter watches me intently. “Who am I by myself? I don’t quite know but a lot of the things that I used to care about seem so unimportant now. It may be easy to say for a privileged woman such as myself, but it was being with Richard that mattered. Perhaps I wouldn’t have needed a house quite so big, as many clothes, a society life. A lot of it is vapid anyhow and if I attempted to push you and your mother into being something other than who you are – no, it is when not if, and for that I am sorry.” 

“It’s alright grandma,” her response is immediate and she reaches across the table for my hand. Hers is still smaller than mine, and so it will remain, I imagine, but her fingers are swollen. I am 80% sure now that she is indeed pregnant.

I look at her nails – painted a light pink – and mine – a deep red, not quite wanting to look at her face just yet, having exposed myself deeply and thoroughly. I am not in the habit.

“You have sometimes wanted me to be something, yes, but so has Mom – it happens with families, I think. And in the end, you have always been quite accepting. When I dropped out of Yale or went off across the country by myself – and during all these years, especially. When I turned out to be such a failure, and a nomad. Living with Paris or Mom or Grandpa and you, going off on trips all the time, chasing something that wasn’t really there.”

“You should have been chasing, Rory,” I sigh. There’s a tear in the corner of my eye, “I wanted to chase things. It is something I never got to do and I think, in the end, that is what we want for our daughters and granddaughters more than anything – that which we ourselves didn’t get to have.”

“Perhaps it is more glittering and special if you have never had it but still. Spending your younger years searching and traveling the world, even failing, is not a waste of time. It has made you, and it will make you a stronger woman from now on forward.”

“You have always been a very strong woman.” “Thank you, dear,” I look up at her now and lean across the table to kiss her forehead. “Mine was just a different time. But it’s alright, I have ultimately made my peace with it. And I am lucky, I still have time to try and do some of the things I haven’t done, to find a new part of myself and make up for certain regrets of the past. If I may.”

“But at the same time, I want you to know that I’ve had a happy life in many ways. Your grandfather, early as I might have met and married him, truly was the love of my life. I could never regret giving up a career of my own, travels to find myself – not fully – because I got to marry him and that was the most beautiful part of the life I’ve lead. I’m very grateful for what we had. Much as I miss him, we were granted a great many years together. And…”

I smile at her, though the tear will not leave – I can still only rarely talk about Richard without beginning to cry – “And that is everything. A different kind of everything than you will have in your life, perhaps, but an everything nonetheless.”

“I don’t think I have any kind of everything,” she says quietly, voice full of trepidation and shame. “Well, you will get there then,” I say encouragingly. “I don’t know.”

“What is it that you wanted to tell me?” I prod gently. She doesn’t let go of my hand as she takes an audible breath. “Grandma, I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, honey.” I round the table to hug her, not letting go of her hand as I do. She has tears in her eyes and I’m no longer surprised that they are mirrored in mine.

“It’s okay, darling,” I tell her, and she burrows her head into my shoulder. My white sweater is soaked by her tears but I don’t really mind. “It’s okay,” I repeat. “I’m not angry with you, and it will all work out, I’m sure. I’ll help you if you want me to.”

The minutes pass and when she leans back a bit, I attempt to smile reassuringly at her, before I squeeze her hand, get up from where I’ve been kneeling next to her and move to sit on the wicker chair next to her, inviting her back into my arms. She reaches for me without hesitation and for once I am glad that maybe, just maybe I have done something right.

She keeps crying but I imagine that with pregnancy hormones and the difficulty of finding oneself pregnant and single – at least I think that she still is – that is the most natural reaction.

“I want to keep it,” she murmurs once the sobs have stopped. “That’s wonderful,” I tell her. “Though it is your choice, and I would support you no matter what.” This seems to trigger another round of crying. “Thanks, grandma,” she whispers and buries her face in my neck.

I kiss the top of her head. “I love you, Rory, and I will always attempt to be there for you if you need me. I promise.” 

“Are you sure you’re okay with it?” she asks hesitantly. “Of course, I am. I just want you to be happy.” “But I don’t know how to be happy. I don’t think I’ve truly been happy for a long time.” That makes me infinitely sad to hear.

Of course I wonder who the father is but do not feel that I should ask. I can only hope that she will volunteer that and other pieces of information voluntarily.

“Isn’t this just the same thing all over again? Aren’t you disappointed? I was supposed to do things differently…”

“No, Rory, it is not at all the same thing. Times have changed, as have I – I hope. There are many strong, wonderful single mothers out there – if that is what you will be, I don’t wish to assume. You are 33, not 16, you are certainly old and mature enough to have and take care of a child.”

“And truth be told,” I force myself to continue. “If I had another chance to react to your mother’s pregnancy, I would react quite differently. I have thought about that occasion often over the years – the day she told me that she was pregnant. And believe me, if I could alter my own reaction, I would.”

“What would you do then?” she asks, curiosity creeping into her voice and replacing some of the despair now that the focus is not on her situation exclusively anymore. I rest my chin on the top of her head and consider the question carefully.

“You are not my do-over, Rory, I want to be very clear about that because you are your own person and not a replacement of your mother in my life. But I would hope that I could react similarly as I have to your news, if I had the chance to go back in time. I think I would hug her and tell her that it would be okay, that we would help her. She must have been so scared.”

Another wave of sobs is already starting and while Rory may be moved by my confession, I do reconsider whether I should have told her. I would rather she calmed down a bit.

“It’s not how mom reacted either,” she finally tells me. “No?” I try to keep my voice as neutral as possible. Girl of mine, sometimes you really are more similar to me than you would like to admit! 

“No. She completely freaked out to be honest.” “Rory, I’m sorry. Perhaps I really have the benefit of having made and regretted these mistakes in the past. Lorelai is very stubborn, as am I,” I try to infuse my voice with a bit of humor. “She will calm down eventually; she always does where you are concerned.”

I sigh, “Perhaps it is a mother’s greatest vice that she imagines and wants so much for her daughter. You’ll do it differently, won’t you, baby girl?” I am not certain that she will but I have to offer that tiny bit of wisdom. Somebody in the family should get mothering right at some point. Or am I already projecting my own wishes and desires onto her again?

“I’ll try to,” she assures me. “That’s all I ask.”

“What if it’s a boy?” “Same thing,“ I chuckle. “Well, for the most part.” She joins in my laughter. “I feel like it’s going to be a girl. Do you think women can feel that?” “Sometimes. I thought I did with your mother.”

“That’s nice,” she sighs into my neck. “Your mother will be fine, too.” I assure her. “we can invite her and Luke up to Nantucket for a weekend while you are here, if you like.” “You wouldn’t fight?” “Oh dear, I hope not.”

“It would be kind of funny,” she laughs again, and I am relieved that she has cheered up a bit. “Can you imagine? You’d be the one saying it’s alright and Mom would be like, ‘no, she’s single and pregnant, she doesn’t have a job or a place to live or anything really!’”

“Life has a funny way of turning things around sometimes. But you do have a place to live.” “It’s very sweet of you to let me stay with you for a while and I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks but I can’t stay here forever, can I?” “You could if you wanted to, of course, but I don’t think you’d want to spend your life on an island off the coast of Massachusetts, would you?”

She shakes her head. “That’s alright, it’s not where I expected my life would end up either,” I laugh lightly. “But I think you’d prefer a city to eventually further your career?” She nods. 

“Well, you could have the house in Hartford to begin with. I know it’s big but we already own it. As you know, I wanted to sell it but I can take it back off of the market easily, and it would be special to give it to you and your baby instead. I would gladly but don’t feel pressured, take it only if you want to. There’s no pressure”

I gently pull up her face, so she can look me in the eye, “Absolutely none!” “Alternatively, we could find you something else in a city of your choice. I would help you pay for it if that would be acceptable to you, but the choice is yours alone.”

“I think I would like to stay in Hartford, actually. It’s a very generous offer, grandma and I…” I wave her concerns away, though I try to do so gently.

“It’s yours if you want it. I cannot live there without Richard but if you and your child were to make it your home, that would seem rather fitting. As I said it’s rather big, but at some point, you may want more children, you may find a companion or perhaps you would like to live with friends as many people do these days.”

“There is also the option of working from home as an author if that is a path that you would like to continue on, or to start a different business of your own, anything really. The choice would be yours alone, I really do want to make that clear. I’ll sign it over to you and if you should wish to sell it at any point in the future, you absolutely can.”

“Thank you, grandma,” she draws me in closer, if that is even possible, and I hug her back just as forcefully. It is not just about the money, though it is a very big gift, and I think she understands that. The house was mine and Richard’s for such a long time and my passing it on to her so that she can make her own life and family there – or anywhere else if she chose – is a sign of my love and trust.

This time, there are no strings attached, no quid pro quo and no demands. I trust her to always come back to me, even as I am gifting her millions of dollars worth of real estate that will assure her monetary independence and security, quite apart from me. 

I am not trying to go over Lorelai’s head either and I hope she won’t see it as an attempt at any such thing. She has to know that staying in her childhood bedroom in Lorelai’s small house is not the right thing for a 33-year-old professional woman and soon-to-be-mother to do. Not when there are other options at hand. 

To be truthful, I am not entirely certain that she is aware of that but I will attempt to explain it to her as best as I can. 

“We’ll have to explain this to your mother gently and carefully,” I tell Rory. “I hope she’ll understand, but I don’t want her to think that I am doing this behind her back or worse, to spite her.”

“One day, she’ll get this house, if she wants it, I think it would be more to her taste anyhow, wouldn’t it?”

Rory nods, “Yes. She hasn’t told you, of course, but she actually likes this house quite a lot. The warm and inviting holiday décor, the closeness to the sea, which she adores… Except for a snowed-in Norwegian house in winter, full of Christmassy stuff, furry blankets, warm sweaters and hot chocolate, there’s probably little that Lorelai Gilmore would love more than a seaside house.”

I nod contentedly – perhaps my daughter and I really are not so different after all.


	2. Chapter 2

“Richard!” I shouted. “Richard! Richard! Richard!” My voice was exhilarated and high as I jumped down the long, elegant staircase at a determinedly sedate pace.

“Richard!” “Emmy,” he smiled, letting his briefcase drop against the hallway closet, moving forward more quickly and opening his arms up to me. “Richard!” I laughed into his ear once more when he caught me in a tight embrace, his arms crossing behind my back.

I had to stand on tiptoes in order to reach his ear but I kissed it twice before softly sharing, “I’m pregnant!” He picked me up from the floor with the ease that he had back then, I wrapped my legs around his waist and he spun me around.

I could not stop laughing – it was what we had planned and wished for for so long and I, never a devoutly religious person, had even prayed for it to happen.

I realize it is the height of hypocrisy to pray only in times of personal need but I had dreamed of having children for years. I wanted this child so much, and while the path up to that point had been long and arduous, I was determined to make it happen this time. 

However, for the evening hours we spent alone in our mansion then, we were nothing but two people madly in love, who had all of a sudden been blessed beyond measure. Richard kept spinning me – slowly and gently – and I did not feel dizzy at all. Quite the opposite – I felt nothing but elation.

My hands gripped his neck like vine, both out of affection and to make sure I would not fall and he pressed kisses all over my face. My own corresponding laughter sounded foreign to my own ears. We had entered a different world already, one that was completely our own.

I had purposefully sent the maid home early, Richard’s favorite healthy dish – perhaps not his favorite over all, but his favorite of the healthy meals that we habitually had – of grilled Norwegian salmon and asparagus was waiting in the oven and I had made the apple tarts for dessert myself.

“Can you believe it, Richard?” I whispered, as though there was still someone in this monumentally large house who might overhear us – despite the fact that I had diligently made sure that there was no one left. “Can you believe it?” 

“I’m so happy, Emmy,” he whispered back, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath on the side of my mouth, my arms and legs still wrapped around him. “I’m so happy.” I beamed up at him and he spun me once more. 

“I should put you down, I think,” he said and proceeded to carry me into the sunroom as I kept laughing and smiling and blinking back small tears. I could not believe that this was my reality now. I was pregnant; with child; a baby was growing within me; I was madly in love with my husband and we were finally to have a little being that was half him and half me. 

I saw it as the culmination of our love and simultaneously, as a separate, individual human being for us to love, and raise, and spend time with. The baby would make us a family – three people to live together and have fun, to laugh with one another and simply have the best time.

I had desired this for such a long time – a family of my own, and one that I was going to turn into the affectionate, understanding, close-knit unit that I had always dreamt of. It was going to be all so different from how it had been with my own family – excepting my relationship with my sister – or how it was with Richard’s parents.

This was mine, and I was going to love this little girl or boy as much as I did Richard. In time, more children would hopefully join us, three if I had my way – and while I did not always get what I wanted, I was going to fight for these children with all of my might and strength.

I would dedicate my life to them, to Richard, this baby and the future three, and oh my God, I did not think that any woman had ever been so happy as I was right then and there.

Of course they have been, I realize that now, but it is the prerogative of the young to believe that they are the first to have ever fallen so madly in love; the first ever astounded at the wondrous notion of putting a part of yourself together with the one you love and melting yourselves into a whole new being to have and to hold; the first to ever have been delirious with joy at the knowledge that there is a whole new human being living within you. Within you! 

“Richard,” I smiled, as he refused to put me down in the end, but rather sat down on our favorite arm chair, with me still tied to him and now placed on his lap. “Richard, I love you so much!” 

“And I you, Emmy.” The kiss we shared was neither tame nor completely wild. I lightly nibbled his upper lip, he drew my tongue into his mouth and I closed my eyes in bliss. Truly, I could not imagine a moment when I had been happier than I was then.

The house, the clothes, car and travels that he provided me with were very nice – more than nice, really – but when he kissed me like that, I could not help but think that they were not what mattered.

I would have loved that man in any situation or circumstance, and at the end of the day, it was not things that we needed to be happy. A house and some money to provide for us, yes, but the amount no longer mattered. I would have kissed him and made love to him in a much smaller house; I would have had his child in a world that didn’t include fancy parties and Chanel suits. 

Ours could have been a much simpler life and I would not have cared. He kissed me as though I was the most precious thing in his world, and he meant the same to me. How lucky were we to have found one another, to have gotten to be together and to have made a baby together? One could not possibly ask for more, and I would not have.

I never loved the world more than when it was just the two of us in the house. I could forget that there were parties to attend, long days at the office to be had, and people to impress. Sometimes I dreamed of moving to the seaside, just the two of us – well, now three. To the coast of Rhode Island or Massachusetts perhaps.

I could write historical novels and cook fresh lobster for dinner, we could go for long evening or Saturday afternoon walks on the beach, I’d get a cat. And Richard – I was not certain about Richard to be honest, but maybe he would start his own business of some kind. Something that could be done locally – which limited the choices to be quite frank, but something to do with real estate perhaps.

After all, I was not the only one dreaming of holidays or a whole life spent at the beach. Those houses always sold and someone with Richard’s tenacity and affinity for business could have made a small empire of it, if he had wished.

Of course, it was mostly I who wished – not for some grand success but for peace, calm and togetherness. A little family life far from the crowds – we could have had a cleaning lady if he insisted but I would have happily made dinners of mashed potatoes and locally sourced fish, lunches of European style sandwiches and afternoon coffee with cherry pie made of fruit I had picked in the garden myself.

I could have made friends with the neighbors, who, in my imagination, were less catty and capricious than the society ladies that inhabited our Hartford circles. Richard’s mother would have found it completely unacceptable to live year-round in what she considered a holiday house, and would have hopefully stayed away. 

Richard could have gone to visit her in London once or twice per year, perhaps taken the children once they were older, and that would have been it. Meanwhile, I would have been elsewhere – on a book tour, I imagined. Lorelai the First would have made snide remarks on the fact but I would not have heard. 

Somehow, I had always been unlucky with parents. My own had been distant and derisive, Mama an alcoholic and Papa mentally absent from any conversation that I tried to have with him and depressed, though nobody said so back then. And Richard’s had been even worse – well, towards me at least. 

I was determined to be a very different kind of parent. For this child, and all the children that I hoped would follow, I wanted to be understanding and good; a positive example; happy, but most of all, loving. I wanted to hug them, kiss them, sing them to sleep and never have them doubt that they were deeply, deeply loved. I wanted them to know that they could come to me with any and all troubles, that I would listen carefully, advise them gently where needed and never, ever judge.

With the retrospective of a long life I would like to say that perhaps it is always a mistake to not want to be something too strongly. My dreams and wishes for the life I would lead certainly went up in smoke at some point. I cannot quite pinpoint it, but what can I do today, all these years later? Except look back at the very first weeks of my pregnancy and think that perhaps it had turned out better if I had been less anxious to make everything just the way I wished for it to be.

Perhaps if I had had a better example for parents or parents-in-law, I would have been a better mother without thinking too much or imagining a variety of different scenarios. If I had not set out to be the exact opposite of my own mother, maybe then I would have been a mother worth having. Maybe that was really it – I was too focused on being something different instead of just taking a deep breath and being whoever looking at my little girl’s face would make me.

But on that evening, which I still enjoy looking back on, despite the heartache that is now associated with Lorelai, the daughter I lost in life and Richard, the husband I lost to death. Things were much simpler and I did not feel that soul-shattering kind of hurt.

Although I had lost two children before that pregnancy came to be and was tellingly careful as I ran down the stairs to meet Richard, that day was filled with nothing but joy, hope and the intimacy of becoming a mother.

Despite having been forced to say goodbye to two already, having experienced the pain – both physical and mental –, blood and angst-filled ambulance rides that repeatedly deprived me of the title of mother, my body was made lighter by an intense belief that this child was finally meant to be mine.

I spoiled my body, I ate plenty and healthily, engaged in light exercise, slept many hours – even when the tiredness overcame me in the middle of the day; I drank herbal or lavender teas; stayed away from red meat, seafood and my beloved coffee – I was careful but I also believed in her so, so much. 

After what must have been thirty minutes or an hour of kissing, Richard drew a gentle finger down my cheek. “Should we have dinner? I don’t want the two of you to miss out on food on my account.” “I’m not really hungry,” I said, pecking his lips lightly. “I had a couple of snacks in the afternoon, so…”

He caught my hint easily, took a more secure hold of my back with one arm and pushed himself up with the other. Laughing for the two hundredth time that night, I made sure my legs once more held onto him and buried my face at the base of his neck. He smelled of coffee and the aftershave I had gotten him for his birthday. 

“Richard Gilmore, sometimes I think you truly were made just for me,” I thought but did not say so out loud. We were moving up the stairs now and for the first time, the house felt like my own personal fairytale ballroom. Richard walked the three of us upstairs slowly; held onto me with one hand and the banister with the other. I could tell he took great care not to jostle me unduly, but I had already known he would not let me fall.

If there was one person I trusted never to let me fall, it was Richard. Well, I would have trusted Hope too, but she did not have the strength to physically carry me.

I opened my eyes as Richard carefully opened our bedroom door. While he switched on the light, closed the door and lovingly deposited me on the bed, I thought of the four empty bedrooms that the second floor held – the ones I intended to fill with children, excited chatter and laughter as the years went by. Two girls and two boys perhaps?

One of the bedrooms already held the doll house that Hope and I had played with growing up. The one that had provided a canvas for the various life paths that we imagined for ourselves as children– we had acted them all out using dolls for ourselves and the imaginary people that we thought might one day populate our lives. The doll that represented me was blonde, which I had not been and would never be, but I did not mind. 

The stories we told were quite different but the one thing that never changed was that our imagined families lived in “flats” on different floors of the same house. Together forever, in a way that goes beyond marriage or even children.

I loved Richard dearly and I love Lorelai more than I have ever loved anyone but my sister is the one person that has loved me at my best, has loved me at my worst and as opposed to all other human beings, I have always known that she will continue to do so for as long as she breathes. I offer her the same. 

The shared house, or even houses in the same neighborhood, country or continent, however, forever remained our fantasies. Sometimes I think that perhaps I could have done better with Lorelai if I had had my sister nearby. She would have corrected me, encouraged me and perhaps offered a different, more accurate perspective than my own, had she gotten to know Lorelai in depth.

She always was better with people than I and while she has never had children, I am quite certain that she would have been the better mother too. She is the only person whom I would not have envied for the quality. We never did envy one another – not even as little girls, despite the fact that that was what seemed to be expected of sisters. 

I wished I could go to Paris to share the joy of my pregnancy with her but alas, I could not. I had the money, I had the time but this baby had to be protected at all costs and with the way my previous pregnancies had turned out, I simply did not dare.

“If it’s a girl, she might enjoy the doll house,” I whispered into Richard’s ear as he drew his lips down my neck. “I’m sure she would,” he chuckled. “You will be a marvelous mother.” I believed him then. 

I lay on top of him and closed my eyes once more, as he gently moved my yellow sundress’s straps down my shoulders, taking the bra straps along with them. He kissed my cheek then – a simple, dry kiss – and moved his left hand my back in slow circles – some small and some wider – as his right hand remained entwined with my left. 

I opened the first buttons of his white shirt with quick fingers and lay down my face there, breathing in his signature smell, while he lazily moved down the zipper of my dress until he reached my lower back.


	3. Chapter 3

It is the middle of November and Rory has been staying with me for a little over a month now, writing her book, which has turned into a novel sprinkled with semi-autobiographical elements, as I take online classes in French and Italian.

Lorelai knows that Rory is staying with me because I told her – in careful words and interspersed with I’m sorrys that as a grandmother, I don’t feel I should have had to say but did anyway because I did not want her to think I was taking her place or worse, attempting to estrange her daughter from her. 

My daughter reacted with surprise – due to my apologies, I suppose – and grumpiness. Rory was ruining her life, she insisted. Writing a novel in the quiet autumn of Nantucket was not ruining her life, I insisted. She was going to get published and hopefully be able to take a bit of break from work after the birth of the baby. Additionally, 33 was old enough to be a single mother, I explained.

Her daughter was not supposed to be a single mother, she’d remained adamant. “Lorelai, dear,” I’d replied with the softest voice I could muster. “I know, but sometimes these things just happen – though it is difficult, not everything goes according to the ideal and elaborate plans we make up in our minds.”

I felt as though we had gone through some bizarre role reversal – she had become Me and I was desperately trying to soften the blows and make peace for the sake of the both of them.

“She was supposed to have a partner to raise her child with,” she insisted. “Because I know perfectly well what it’s like not to have that,” she sighed. “And I so wanted her to have what I didn’t.” As mothers we often do. “And I wanted it all for her: marriage first, with someone who adores her, then the children…”

I wanted to tell her that I knew perfectly well how she was feeling but realized any such assertion would be bound to make her even angrier. If she did not recognize the irony of the situation, far be it from me to tell her. 

“When you’re ready,” I said instead. “Come up here and talk to her, make peace. I’ll take good care of her in the meantime – not because I can do that better than you can, I know I can’t, I’m doing it because she’s my granddaughter and I’m an old woman with a lot of time on her hands,” I chuckled a little, hoping some humor would help diffuse the situation.

“You’re not that old, Mom,” was Lorelai’s surprising response. “Thank you, dear. Old enough to trick Rory into taking afternoon naps by claiming that I really need them myself, though.” There it was – her first laugh; I marveled at how I managed that, to be quite honest. 

“So you really don’t need one?” This topic of conversation was far safer and more comfortable. “I actually don’t,” I laughed. “Not yet, anyway.” 

“Thanks, Mom… for calling me and….” “You’re welcome. And Lorelai? I truly am sorry, I really am not attempting to take your place in Rory’s life. If anything I’ve done or am doing is wrong, just tell me, please?”

I do believe that this is the meekest she has ever heard me. The anything would have been an opportunity to throw anything I’ve ever said or done throughout the course of her life back at me, but she didn’t take it.

“Good night, Mom.”

Lorelai has not come up to Nantucket throughout the past month, however, and Rory tells me that she has not called either. Now I feel obliged to do something that I have been dreading. I need to call her and ask her to come to Nantucket, and there is a myriad of ways in which this conversation could potentially go wrong. Yet I felt that I must.

I have to try everything in my power to assure that Lorelai will see her grandchild grow up, to experience what I myself missed out on. It is ridiculous anyhow, Rory is 33 years old and has been out in the world for a long time. And if she has made some unconventional choices in her life, well, then that does not truly make her too different from Lorelai herself.

For her to judge her as she did, has proved to me that Lorelai can indeed be Me at times, but it has also showed me that in the end, none of those things matter much. Lorelai has not seen it yet, but what matters is to be together, to spend time with one another, to listen and talk – and it does not matter whether we do that in a mansion in Hartford, Lorelai’s home in Stars Hollow or my holiday house.

And before we judge one another, I would prefer it if we all just took a deep breath first, and asked ourselves: is it really worth it? What will it change and do I have the right to tell my daughter, granddaughter, mother or grandmother who do be?

I am getting philosophical; it is a side effect of old age I suppose, but none of us truly have that right at the end of the day. 

“Lorelai, how are you?” I start the conversation pleasantly, even though I know she must suspect that I have different reasons for calling. “I’m doing okay, Mom, how are you?”

“I’m doing alright, thank you. I have started to learn Italian and am trying to improve my French.” “That actually sounds very cool,” I am surprised to be getting a smile out of her so easily. 

“I enjoy it. How is Luke?” “You really want to know?” “I do.” “He is doing well. You’d probably be pleased to know that he has been trying to get me to go up to Nantucket.”

“You could both come,” I say lightly. Luke might help keep her calm. “That’s nice of you, Mom, but he’s too busy with the diner right now. He’ll be joining us for Christmas though.”

I am relieved to hear that she will in fact be coming for Christmas at least, but I have to give her that – no matter how bad things were between us, she has always been there for Christmas.

“I don’t want to pressure you, Lorelai. It’s been about a month, I just wanted to ask if you have given it some consideration.” “Of course I have,” she sounds angry and I have to keep myself from sighing. “I have thought about it a lot, but… Mom, I just can’t believe that Rory, my Rory, has turned into this person?”

“What kind of person?” “The kind who… Mom, has Rory told you who the baby’s father is?” “No.” “So she refused,” she huffs indignantly. “Not exactly. I never asked.” “What?” Now she sounds stunned.

“I didn’t ask, Lorelai. I imagine she’ll tell me some day; I hope so anyway. But I didn’t feel it was my place to ask.” “You didn’t?” “No, because she was obviously distraught and it doesn’t change the most important things.” “Which are?”

“Rory is family, the baby is family. I want to make sure that Rory has the chance to get to a calmer place in her life again, has the time and space to write this book since that is what she wishes to do professionally, and ultimately gives birth to a healthy baby.”

“There is nothing wrong with the baby, is there?” It’s my turn to sigh, “No, nothing at all. I’m sorry for worrying you Lorelai. I just want to make sure it stays that way.” “And I’m in the way of that?”

Why does she always get like that? Still, I take a deep breath and think about how to best word my answer. “That’s not what I meant, dear. I just meant that I’m trying not to upset her with questions such as the baby’s father, make sure she eats healthily, goes for walks on the beach, takes breaks from writing and afternoon naps. Things like that…”

“Okay, sorry,” Lorelai sounds somewhat contrite. “That’s alright, Lorelai. I know you are worried too. If you want to come to Nantucket, we are here.”

“Oh and if you do come, I’ll get you some of that delightful red velvet cake that they sell at this lovely bakery in town,” I decide to add.

“Trying to bribe me, huh?” She actually laughs a little. “If anyone can be bribed with sweets, it’s you, Lorelai,” I smile. “But the cake really is delicious and if you’re good, I’ll even buy a whole cake just for you.” “What constitutes being good?”

“Just coming by.” “See you on Friday!” “I’ll have coffee and cake.” “A whole cake!”

“A whole cake!” “Goodbye, Madam Wonka!”

At least that is one of her references that I can actually place.

“Did you reach Mom?” Rory asks me nervously over chicken parmigiana and grape juice. I have to admit that I have enjoyed my daily dinners with Rory very much. I had been quite lonely before she arrived and though I know that she will and must leave again, I’d rather just enjoy the moment and not think of that. 

“Yes. I managed to convince her to come up this Friday,” I watched Rory’s reaction carefully. “That’s… soon.” “I know, dear. But I don’t think anything good would come from putting this off any longer. Your mother has probably calmed down a bit since you last saw her, and has had time to process.” 

“Calmed down a bit might not be enough though.” “You’ll work it out,” I encourage. “You’ve been so close for most of your life – yes, you’ve had fights and disagreements along the way, but you always did make up in the end,” I wink at her.

“Thank you, grandma,” she smiles and proceeds to take a sip of her juice. I have taken to drinking juice along with her, I don’t think it would be nice to have wine next to her when she can’t have any. It’s a rather small sacrifice.

“Grandma, you have truly been the sweetest and the last thing I want is to disappoint you, but now that Mom is going to come here, I think I have to finally tell you about…” She draws in breath, “… the baby’s father.”

“You don’t have to do anything, dear. I haven’t asked because I didn’t want to push… and I still don’t. Your mother seems to know but that is fine with me, you don’t have to tell me because she knows. She may not mention it.” “She may or may not but you have to know that a large part of our fight centers on the identity of the father.”

“Doesn’t she like him?” I want to ask but keep myself in check. If she wishes to tell me, she will. 

“This is so embarrassing,” she says as she watches me cut off a piece of chicken and pause. “It doesn’t have to be. If it was a ‘one night stand’ as they say, that is also fine with me. I won’t judge, I promise.” She gapes at me as though she cannot believe what I just said. “Oh come on, Rory, I wasn’t born yesterday and not all of my friends have spent their lives in 50 year marriages.”

“And truth be told, even if they did, not all of them have been faithful.” “But…” she seems at a loss for what to say. “Have I ever indulged? No, I can’t say that I have. My life has been quite different but a lot of that had to do with the way young ladies were raised back when I was young, the fact that I acquiesced to these rules – which not all of my girlfriends did, by the way – and, of course, that I met your grandfather early on in life.”

“I can’t say what my life would have been like if the factors had not played out that way but I don’t judge.” I finally put the bite of chicken that has been resting on my fork inside my mouth and chew contentedly. I have not done too badly with this dish. 

“It is worse than that, though. I don’t even know where to start…” “Well, I suppose you could either start with the name or a description of the situation you found yourself in.”

“That’s just it, grandma, I don’t think I found myself in any situation. I just messed up really badly.”

I keep quiet, watching her attempt to give order to her thoughts. She is a writer after all – I am certain that she will manage to tell the story once she is ready.

“Okay, let’s start with the idea of love. Or the feeling, the force, the oddity? Whichever.” I nod. “I promise I’ll tell you everything this time but can I ask you one more question before I do?” “Of course.” 

I have gotten quite used to our long conversations, to answering her astute questions about my life and perhaps asking a couple of my own. I have found that I do not mind sharing most of my thoughts and feelings with her. It has even become rather fluid and easy, the way it is with Hope. 

“When you met grandpa so young, while you were a student at Smith, how did you know he was the right person for you?” “I believe there are several answers to this question,” I pour us both more grape juice. “First of all, I was raised to marry in a way that girls today are thankfully not. I do still believe in marriage but I also believe in options, in opportunities.”

“The second answer is that I never thought I would fall madly in love. I did not think it possible to love like that and be loved in return – at least not for myself. So when I met your grandfather and knew that I loved him, I felt lucky at no longer having to choose between marrying somebody I didn’t love and having to leave everything I knew behind. And I was determined to choose the latter.”

“But instead, it appeared as though I could have it all. Everything but a career, but at that point I thought I could do without. I would get to stay within the world that I grew up in and marry the man I loved – perfection, no?”

“Finally, and that is the most important reason, I just really, really loved him. I wanted to be his, I wanted to merge my life with his, to live with him, stay with him, have children with him. It sounds so traditional but it was really just a wish to be one. I was prepared to make sacrifices for that – many women are and they don’t always get back just as much as they put into the union.”

I look back up at Rory – she wipes a tear out of the corner of her eye and only then do I realize that my own cheeks are wet as well.

“My sister,” I decide to add. “My sister could never acquiesce to society’s expectations, by the way. But then she also could not find a man she loved. “What if I can’t either?” Rory wonders. “I doubt that you will never find a man you love, Rory. Perhaps not right now, that I don’t know. But my sister’s situation was quite different from yours anyhow.”

“Why is that?” When we visited with Hope during our European tour, she was not in a relationship, nor did she mention to Rory her reasons for leaving our harsh and intolerant circle, and settling in Montmartre. 

“She’s a lesbian, dear.” Rory seems genuinely surprised. “Our parents and circle treated her abominably when that came out. They wanted her to convert – impossible, of course, though many over the years have conducted oppressed or secretive, hidden lives. But those are not happy lives. And my sister has always been true to her name – she has always believed in making her dreams reality, even when it seemed impossible.”

“She has always thought outside of the box and had great courage, I suppose.” “Wow, grandma, why haven’t you ever told me?” “I had assumed that your mother had.” “No, she hasn’t… Why hasn’t she?” “Well, perhaps you can ask her once the two of you have made up.”

“You’re going back to Paris at the beginning of December?” “That is the plan, though I have not yet booked a ticket.” Ever since Richard died, I have indulged myself and gone to visit my sister every other month. I do not wish to leave a pregnant Rory here alone though, which is why I am somewhat reluctant this time. What if something happened outside of the maid’s working hours and there was no one there to hear Rory scream and call for an ambulance? 

I realize that most likely, hopefully nothing of the sort will happen but one never knows. And I certainly will not take any chances. My hope is that if they have made peace by then, Lorelai might come and stay with her. Spending a week by the sea just the two of them would also do their relationship a lot of good.

“You should go, grandma,” Rory nods but I just smile. “Back to my own story it is then?” she sighs. “If you wish.” “Well, I do and I don’t but here it goes…” The next sentence out of her mouth surprises me somewhat. I did not expect her to go that far back in time. 

“When I dated Logan back at Yale, I knew that I loved him but I still didn’t want to marry him right then and there. It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine marrying him; in fact, I had sometimes imagined what it would be like to be married to him… But I didn’t want to marry him at 22.”

I nod understandingly, “That’s quite comprehensible.” “I didn’t want to marry him at the age of 22,” she continues. “I didn’t want to follow his career to California, and I wanted to travel the world. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him.” “I can understand that,” I assure her. 

She pushes a strand of hair out of her face, quite clearly frustrated. “He didn’t understand, though. It was all or nothing for him. Either I married him at 22 and followed him to California, or we were over. So we were over then but, and I realize this is pathetic, I never fell in love again.”

I decide to remain quiet for the time being, taking in what she has just said and perhaps understanding her better than I ever have. “Not like that at least. I dated other men, you know that, but it was never as exhilarating, as important, as I-can-picture-myself-marrying-this-man. And I do see the irony in that.”

“Grandma, I think it’s crazy to feel that way. Crazy and destructive and messy. Other people may be more stable, they may look better on paper, they may be considerate enough to realize that you may not want to get married right out of college, but what does it matter if you don’t love them like that?”

I despair for her in that moment. It sounds almost as though she is describing my relationship with Richard – and if Logan is her Richard, well, then I can’t imagine her pain.

“It’s not an excuse, though. It’s not an excuse and I do realize that. Madly in love or not, 32 is too old to be so foolish, so inconsiderate, so immoral and unfair.” “What is it?” I say simply. “I had an affair with him,” she whispers. “At 32 I had an affair with him for a year and now I am pregnant with his child.”

My eyes widen. “Is that why your mother is upset?” “For the most part.” I nod. “I don’t condone affairs, but I have promised not to judge you and I’ll keep to that.” “You don’t have to.” I nod, “I want to. And Rory, you don’t have to be perfect, I don’t expect you to be.”

She gets up from her half-eaten plate, rounds the table and gives me a hug. “Thank you, grandma.” I kiss her on the top of her head. “Your mother is upset but she won’t stay angry forever. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Actually, I do feel a little hungrier now.” “Good. Finish your chicken and then maybe I’ll drive you to the gas station for those candy bars you enjoy so much. The baby needs sustenance!”

“Unhealthy sustenance?” “A bit of candy won’t hurt. You haven’t eaten nearly enough this evening…” “I’m sorry, it’s not because of your chicken.” “I know.” “You’re a great cook.” “Thank you.”

Having finished my portion, I rest my chin on my hand thoughtfully as I watch her devour the chicken and ask for seconds. The sun has set by now and it’s dark outside the sunroom, except for the patio lights. I will not judge her but the situation is not so easily solved. If she loves the Huntzberger boy and he is getting married to someone else, there is nothing I can do to help her. I don’t like the thought, but I have to accept that I can’t make everything right for her.

“Have you told him about the baby?” I wonder aloud. She shakes her head rather contritely. “Mhh.” “Do you think I should?” “I think… I think he has got a right to know but obviously it’s not easy under these circumstances.”

She sighs, “I would like to be with him but I don’t have the right to just insert myself into his and … and her life. I’ve done enough of that – too much. I know he should know, I know he must know but I don’t know how to tell him.”

“I don’t think there is an easy way, Rory, but you might want to try and do it before the wedding. I think it would only complicate things further if you did it afterwards.”

“Did you know that Richard was engaged to Pennilyn Lott when I met him?” I ask Rory as I drive her to buy candy. I realize that getting her candy might seem like an absurd reward for having an affair but it’s rather that I don’t want her to be too upset while pregnant. It could be dangerous. 

“I did know that. But it wasn’t like what I did, was it?” “Not quite,” I admit.


	4. Chapter 4

As a college girl, I was studious, in love with history and literature, alive and fun. Those were the happiest years of my life that I had experienced until then. When I could finally leave my parents’ stifling house behind, and live with my best friend Sweetie and two other girls instead.

Two girls, who would become our friends as well and who, collectively, turned my existence into one of pure laughter, and late night chats about dreams and travels and love, instead. There were lunches at the school cafeteria full of lovely fried chicken and awful roast beef, but somehow I never minded even the most disgusting food they served there. It was all about the company in the end.

I somehow thought of how I would love to spend my entire life like this, living with my girlfriends, reading and smiling our days away, and never forced to marry one of those disgusting, arrogant boys that drove over from Harvard, Princeton or Yale on the weekends. Who had all the right things going for them – money and names and long, important pedigrees, but left me cold as fish whenever I did speak to them.

The relatives and neighbors back home would never have guessed but perhaps I was just like Hope in the end. Perhaps I was a rebel who would not do as was expected of her. If the Ivy League boys were so unstimulating and tiring, perhaps I would run away with a starving artist to Greenwich Village or San Francisco or Rome.

Hope often spoke of running away – of leaving it all behind for a life of excitement and authenticity and freedom, most of all. Thankfully, our parents had never heard her and neither had anyone who might have told them. I was certain of this because had they heard, my parents would have already staged another huge quarrel or “intervention,” the goal of which was always to get Hope or myself to bow to expectations and become a doll.

Nothing but a doll with no mind of her own, who would do as Mother said or single-handedly pull father out of another one of his sad moods – because that was what women did. They served men, they stood by them and did all the emotional labor for them. Not that I would have been able to put it in words such as these at the time.

But I was annoyed at the situation, even then, annoyed and angry and sad and adamant to find another way. I dreamt of remaining at Smith as a teacher – or moving to one of the other Seven Sisters, Wellesley perhaps. I would be able to dedicate my life to history that way, I would earn my own money, have a measure of independence and not be forced to marry one of the faceless guys.

I would live far from my parents… far enough, anyhow – Wellesley, Massachusetts was not Europe or even California but how often would they visit anyhow? They did not come by here often, despite the relative vicinity of Smith and who would find it interesting to visit their unmarried teacher daughter anyway? I often smiled evilly at the thought.

I loved the idea of teaching as well – of spending my days with people, with young girls, of talking to them, listening to their thoughts, laughing with them and exchanging philosophical ideas.

The idea of passing something on to the world seemed tantalizing as well. I sought to make a difference somehow, even as a woman I wanted to leave a tiny inscription on the sculpture of life that would not exist, had I not been here.

Those days at Smith were scrumptious, honestly. My days were spent in class discussions, studying in coffee shops, on the couch or the hockey field with my girlfriends, eating pizza or listening to Sweetie lamenting her latest dates. Falling asleep listening to her lovely voice, as she complained about the state of men, the guys she fell for and insisted that we go to New Zealand for the summer holidays. Simply having fun.

I was free then – free as a young eagle taking flight – and even as the end of junior year approached, I wished it could all last forever. Graduate school perhaps, I thought, even though that was not what my family wanted at all, and certainly not something that many girls did back then. I did not care; I was young and wide-eyed and in love with life.

My cynical upbringing had not been able to destroy me completely; I believed that there was something more out there; I believed in opportunities and fighting for them – most of all, I believed in myself.

It was a mild, airy evening in early May when Sweetie and I were invited to a fraternity party at Yale – I’d driven us there. My dinner partner was a tall and broad-shouldered man with a roguish air about him. He said he was an Economics major but adored history and literature as well. He was interested in everything, really – marine biology and music and travels and art. It was quite intriguing.

His name was Richard, he told me. He should have introduced himself much earlier – where were his manners?, he laughed. I had already read his name on the place card. “Emily.”

Who would have thought back then, as I told him my name, that it would turn out to be the name of his future wife? Though, of course Richard would later claim that he knew; that it was love at first sight and meeting me meant having the rest of his life decided right then and there.

Oh, whatever. I was charmed by him, I will admit.

Though strangers, we were never quite as uncomfortable with one another as one usually is in the beginning. As I had been with the other men I’d kissed and gone on dates with.

He was handsome in a quiet, non-generic way; he was intelligent, and witty. We spent two hours talking to one another at dinner; it went by way to fast. I didn’t want it to end quite so quickly – not because I thought that I wanted to date him, exactly, but because I simply enjoyed the conversation and wished to draw it out. I took this to be a one-time meeting; I was not interested in fraternity boys and rarely did I join Sweetie for dinners at Yale. 

I was happy to pass the time at that strange party with him; many of the boys were boisterous and I did not particularly want to engage with them. They were probably hopelessly drunk already, even this early in the evening – meanwhile, Richard, thankfully, did not appear to be. 

The other people that surrounded us faded into the background as I listened, talked and he laughed at my anecdotes with the simple but fulfilling laughter of a young person concerned with nothing but university work and friends. It was easy – speaking to him and eating that tired fraternity favorite – filet mignon.

As dinner drew to a close, we stood and chatted in small groups in the garden of the fraternity house; it was still mild. Richard kept close to me, no matter who I spoke to, but not in an obnoxious way. Truth be told, on the few occasions that he had left my side to speak to other people, I went to find him. It was at that point that I recognized we were behaving almost like a couple.

It was entirely crazy – we had only just met and I did not even know which city he was originally from, what his favorite book was or whether he actually liked filet mignon. At the same time, I did not mind it; what other people thought of us seemed irrelevant; it was too easy, too enjoyable; and standing next to him made me deliciously light-headed.

I would look up at him – I always had to look up at him –, watch his gorgeous blue eyes that seemed to hide a hundred secrets that I couldn’t possibly guess at, and yet I never felt intimidated. He was a stranger but I thought that I could have easily met up at a coffee shop with him every week, just to talk; I could have made him dinner or accompanied him on a day trip into the City.

What were these strange thoughts? There was no reason to trust him yet – well, no particular one. He might be more dangerous or mad or strange than I ever imagined. It wasn’t like I had bad judgment, but oh… he made me want to stop judging at all. That was where the danger of the whole thing started; he had wordlessly invited me into a realm of our own and I – the independent girl, the clever, the wary one had willingly gone.

When he took my hand as we stood out there alone, people still surrounding us and milling about, we had already formed a little group of our own. The whole hand, no entwined fingers, just a warm, much bigger hand that curled beneath mine in a way that would have made it easy for me to let go.

Yet I held on – it was not a clingy hold but I just rested it there, as though his hand were a silent book or an unmovable table made of cherry wood or a the comfortably warmed ground of a meadow.

We must have held hands for twenty minutes or so, speaking in low voices and occasionally just remaining silent. He appeared more talkative with me than with most other people at the party, but seemed to be a more quiet type of man in general. Quiet and calm.

“What am I going to do?” I thought as the party drew to a close and I was still holding his hand. “What am I going to do?”

It had been quite chivalrous of him to only hold my hand, and to hold it like that. Even so, I found that it was I who would have rather kissed him goodnight. An innocent kiss, nothing but a quick, tiny peck on the mouth, but a kiss nonetheless.

Wishing to kiss someone on the night of first meeting them was new. Wishing to kiss someone at all was rather new as well. When I had kissed boys before, it had been out of a sense of curiosity, an unrealistic wish that it might awaken something within me – that which other girls frequently talked about and within me, lay dormant.

This time, it was out of affection that I wanted to bring my mouth to his. To tell him – I like you. Not I love you or I am in love with you, not It seems as though we should do this or I want to marry you, but simply I like you. Will you be my friend, my someone to talk to, someone to be silent with on a Sunday morning over Greek omelet and black coffee in a coffee shop?

“Would you like to meet again?” he asked me as we said goodbye, our hands having been connected for two hours at least. “Yes.” It was simple, it was quiet, it was sweet and a little bit awkward like honey spread over a piece of buttered toast. 

“We could get coffee if you like? Or would you prefer dinner?” Coffee had seemed like a safe thing to ask me to, he later told me; I had already told him I enjoyed the beverage and an afternoon meeting seemed simple enough, in case I was uncertain or disinterested.

“Yes,” I repeated. “Coffee sounds nice.” “Will you give me your number, Emily McEvoy?” “I’ll call you with the details.” I gave him the number, and he walked me to my car, where Sweetie was waiting for me “My Goodness!” her face said. She was dying to hear all about Richard, no doubt. 

“Are you alright?” she asked, after I had been uncharacteristically quiet during the first 10 minutes of the ride. It was so strange, I thought – everything was. She stirred us safely through the darkened streets of New Haven and I turned to look at her kind, familiar face. 

“Is this even real?” I asked her. “Is what real?” she laughed. “The boy you spent the whole night talking to? I think so.” “No. Yes. No. Everything, really… This seems like a night outside of reality, as though real life has been suspended, you know?”

“Well did you enjoy yourself?” “Very much so.” “Then I’d say this is as real as it gets,” she chuckled. “It’s not as easy as that,” I sighed. “One doesn’t just meet someone and feel connected like that. Or if one does, it is rather naïve and bound to end up a huge and irreversible disaster.”

“Falling in love is not a disaster, Emmy.” “I didn’t say it was love.” “What is it then?” “I don’t know but one evening is not enough to fall in love – that I do know. He might be a serial killer, for all I know!”

Sweetie rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Well, are you going to see Jack again?” “His name is Richard,” I corrected. “I was referring to Jack the Ripper,” she burst out laughing. “That isn’t even funny!” “Don’t be offended on behalf of your handsome Prince, it was you who suggested he was a serial killer.” I laughed right along with her then.

“Still, I don’t know if I can trust him.” “Neither do I,” she admitted. “But the beauty of being young lies in trying, doesn’t it? Trying to love, trying to trust… trying to find someone that would be enjoyable to go to bed with.” “Sweetie!!” I admonished.

“He had a good grip on your hand there, that’s all I’m saying!” “That wasn’t sexual.” “No, but it was rather adorable.” I had to smile. “It was, wasn’t it?”

I was wearing a sky-blue dress that Richard would later gush over as though it was a marvelous gown weaved and sewn by fairy’s hands. In reality it was just a simple sheath dress – short sleeved with a boat neck and a hem that hit just below the knee.

It was a one and a half hour drive back to Northampton – one that I would later come to know quite intimately. 

Sweetie insisted I would soon be dating Richard Gilmore, whereas I was scared out of my mind at the thought of letting someone come intimately close like that. Not just physical intimacy but an intimacy of the heart and mind. He might ruin me yet I thought; if I ended up falling in love with him, he might ruin me yet. 

Long before Richard Gilmore was my husband, he was just a Yale boy – tall as hell and more shy than one would imagine. He waited for me in my favorite Northampton coffee shop on a Thursday in May, 6 days after I had first met him. He rose as I entered and in greeting, squeezed my right hand gently. I wished I could have just pressed my mouth to his but that would have been very inappropriate and could have given him the wrong idea.

“There is something that I have to tell you,” he said after half an hour of chatting about Sweetie, the history of Constantinople, the Louvre, and his love of paella and gumbo. I froze. This seemed like the point at which he would tell me that we would not work out – before we had even become a real couple, how ironic! –; that he wished to be only my friend; that he thought I was nice and intelligent but. But, but, but…

I tried to breathe normally and looked at him with what must have been a mixture of poker face and silent trepidation. He attempted to reach for my hand, where it rested on the table, but then appeared to think better of it and retreated his own hand. I would have preferred to feel it on mine – whatever it was, I would have preferred to get to enjoy just one more minute of skin contact before it all inevitably proceeded to blow up.

“I don’t quite know how to say this, I don’t want you to misunderstand…” I raised an impatient eyebrow at him – I would not let him see how I already hurt on the inside; how I was in pain because I was losing something that I had never had in the first place. 

“I was engaged but I broke it off.” “What?” “I was engaged to another girl but I broke up with her.” “Broke up with her when?” I asked suspiciously. “Last Saturday.”

“But that is… that was…” ”The day after I met you,” he offered. “Richard,” I drew in breath audibly. “What are you saying?”

“I am saying that I would like to go on a date with you, but I could not have possibly done that while I was engaged to another woman.” “That’s the single maddest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!” I gasped. Engaged – I should really stay away from someone who formed and broke engagements so callously.

He sighed. “I’m not saying it was an easy thing to do – I did not wish to hurt her.” “Yet you did,” I insisted. “I did,” he admitted. “I can only hope that she will find someone more suitable to her in time; a man she deserves.”

“And you believe yourself to be the man I deserve?” “I can’t answer that. I would, however, enjoy being a man deserving of one evening spent in your company, if you were amenable.”

I had to suppress a small smile; he really was rather cute. “Perhaps. I’ll think about your proposition.” “Can I buy you another coffee, in the meantime?” he asked, rather shyly. I nodded – apparently he had already figured out how to bribe me. It was more than I could say for any of the men I’d dated, but I certainly was not about to tell him that.

“Here you go, Emily,” he came back with another cup filled with hot coffee and placed it in front of me along with a slice of blackberry pie. I felt strangely moved all of a sudden. He had broken off an engagement for nothing but the chance of a date with me – it was rather touching.

“Why would you break off an engagement for one date with me?” I demanded. His cheeks pinkened slightly – I would have to work hard to ensure I did not fall for Richard Gilmore! “Well…” he looked at me, uncertain, and in that moment of self-consciousness he suddenly looked much too tall for the chair he was sitting in. I had to bite back a bout of laughter that threatened to emerge.

“To tell you the truth, I would rather experience one date with you than a whole marriage with another woman.” “Isn’t that rather insulting to women?” “Or a compliment for you,” he insisted. The corners of my mouth twitched slightly.

“Isn’t this a date?” “If you would like it to be,” Richard said. I opened my mouth and smiled then – teeth and red-painted lips and dimpled cheeks.

I remember the last time we held hands but I can’t go there. I remember, years before that, the first time our hand-holding had become something other than what it used it to be.

He had had his first heart attack and I was holding him up with years of tennis practice and sheer force of will. He held onto my hand like vice, our fingers entwined with my hand on top.

It was the hand-holding of old age and failing bodies, of a lifetime spent together and attuned bodies. It was strange and intimate, it made me cry in the bed room alone after I had left the hospital, and it made me realize that, despite all the promises, reality said that most likely he would be the first to go. 

I remember how his left hand clawed into my white blouse after his second heart attack, as he attempted to walk again, never quite getting back to his former physical form. He often held onto my hand, or my arm, or my shoulder after that. 

Rory no longer just smiled at it; sometimes she looked at me as though she was afraid I could not possibly help keep him upright any longer. I am a small woman and he was a tall, broad man. But I always did.

Underneath the white blouse he left red marks that I expertly hid from him. He would have felt too bad about having hurt me physically. But the truth is that inadvertent physical marks from helping him keep his balance by offering my own body for support were nothing in comparison to the hurt that losing him caused.


	5. Chapter 5

“Lorelai!” I hug her in the doorway when she arrives and I can tell that she is surprised, but I don’t have a lot of people left to hug. Predictably, she stiffens but she ultimately brings her arms around me and pats my back. 

There, I think. She’ll get used to it at some point. If I want to spend these last years of my life in a way that’s worthwhile and reflects what I have always wanted, I’ll have to take some uncomfortable first steps.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” I thus promptly tell her, as I pull her inside. She gapes at me, her mouth forming a perfect O in one of her displays of over-dramatization. I can barely keep myself from rolling my eyes at her but do. I wish she’d become a theatre actress rather than regaling with her performances privately. That is because they are usually aimed at making fun of me. Even when Richard was alive that was the case; only rarely did he become the punchline of her jokes.

Anyhow, I am determined not to let her rattle me tonight. The conversation that she and Rory are about to have is quite enough for one evening. “Wow, the house looks really pretty, Mom,” she tells me after we’ve deposited her suitcase in her room and I’ve coaxed her into joining me in the kitchen. Apparently it’s her turn to surprise me.

“Thank you, Lorelai. Rory went for a walk along the beach but will be back in time for dinner. We’re having pizza,” I wink at her, hoping to cheer her up enough not to get angry that Rory wasn’t here to see her arrive or about the affair or whatever else she’s bothered by. 

“When you told me you were taking Italian classes, did you actually mean that you are going to pizza school?” Lorelai jokes, as she watches me assemble half a dozen pizzas. I chuckle a little at that.

“No, what I meant was that I am studying Italian, the language. I have taken to cooking a little, however. The maid made the dough this morning, I’ve never done that before, I gotta admit. But it’s fun to put on the toppings and then bake them in the pizza oven outside. I just hope they’ll turn out nicely.”

Lorelai nods mutely. Then: “Are you trying to make me fat?” “You’re one to talk! I’ve never seen anyone eat as much as you, yet stay slim!” “Well, it hasn’t been quite as easy to remain that way ever since I hit 45.”

I nod understandingly, “You still have a healthy appetite though. We are also feeding a pregnant girl, and perhaps I’d like to indulge a little myself.”

“You would?” “I would.” “Me too, actually,” she acquiesces and gives a short laugh. “So what have you got there?” “There are plenty of options, I’m sure you’ll find one or two you enjoy.” Hopefully more than that, I have taken great care to make the selection both healthy and enjoyable for someone with Lorelai’s palate. 

“There’s Hawaiian, which Rory said you rather enjoy. Tomato-mozzarella for something simple, 4 cheeses, assorted vegetables – which you can skip if you wish, mushroom-sausage, spinach-feta – which again you can skip if you don’t like the idea, plus Sophia Loren – which is basically asparagus and fried eggs on top.”

“I think I’ll have Sophia Loren,” she laughs. “Lorelai, don’t be crude!” “What?” she plays dumb, as she is bound to do in my presence – and badly so, I might add. “You’re the one who told me that’s what the pizza was called!”

This time I do roll my eyes. I cut up the feta with a bit more force than I had beforehand – I really shouldn’t let her get a rise out of me but… “Because that’s who the pizza was named after but you deliberately made it sound as though you would like to have Sophia Loren, the person. Which by the way, I doubt you really would.”

Lorelai gapes a little. “What, it wouldn’t be acceptable for me to want Sophia Loren the person?” “That’s not what I meant. It would be perfectly acceptable, she is a very attractive woman but you wouldn’t want her, would you?” 

As I move on to the broccoli and red bell peppers, Lorelai’s mouth is wide open. “What did you just say to me, mother? Cause I think I’m hallucinating. Maybe I need some of that pizza – and not the Loren kind – right now because I haven’t eaten anything but a sandwich since breakfast and now my mother is cooking pizza and talking about being attracted to Sophia Loren!”

“I did not say I was attracted to her, I said she was attractive – quite objectively so. Though there would be nothing wrong with being attracted to Sophia Loren or any woman, I’ve already said that.” “Don’t tell me you’ve been spending time in Providence, Rhode Island? It isn’t too far from here, after all…”

“Lorelai, honestly, what is it with you today? Are you making homophobic remarks?” “How do you know that word?” “Well, are you?” “Me? I… No, I… Of course not!” “Good.” “So you have been to Providence?” “As a matter of fact I have, though it’s not actually as close as you make it seem. But I’ve got a lot of time on my hands, so,” I shrug.

“So have you broken up with Jack and are a lesbian now?” I take a deep breath, then sigh. She really is testing my resolve today – even more than on most days. I give myself two minutes to quietly spread an assortment of different vegetables over a pizza that I sincerely hope Rory will have some of. It’s a little calming.

“Lorelai, I was never in a relationship with Jack,” I finally tell her. “Do you hear me? I never was, there was nothing between us – not even a kiss, if you insist on knowing! And I wouldn’t have wanted there to be either.”

“And no, I am not a lesbian either. I am not dating anyone and I did not go to Providence, Rhode Island in order to find myself a female lover or whatever it is you are suggesting. However, your Aunt Hope is a lesbian, as you well know, and I do not take kindly to your insulting lesbians.”

“I was not insulting lesbians!” she gasps. “See to it that you don’t.” “I really was not!” she says, thankfully lowering her voice a little. “I hope that you aren’t. However, you should be a little more careful with your language and jokes where the LGBT community is concerned.”

“I really didn’t mean it that way,” at last she looks contrite – if only for a minute. “I can’t believe that my mother is schooling me on political correctness!” I take another deep breath. “As I’ve said, I’m very sensitive on the topic due to my sister. She was treated abismally by family and so-called friends!”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” “Thank you, Lorelai.” It’s not me that she should be apologizing to on the matter but very rarely does she apologize at all, so I’d better leave it. “I forgot about Aunt Hope,” she tells me as we carry the pizzas outside to bake. That’s not exactly better but I choose to remain quiet. 

“How is she?” I take that as a peace offering. “She’s doing well, I’ve been visiting her every two months now that….” I leave the sentence unfinished; she knows how it should end, anyhow. “It’s been nice to see more of her, living so far apart has not always been easy.” Lorelai, again, looks surprised but I have chosen to be more open with her and Rory and will certainly not back down now.

“That’s nice, Mom. You don’t mind the long flights?” “It’s alright, I always bring a book and by the time I’ve arrived in Paris or back in Boston, I’ve always managed to finish one whole novel. That’s something at least – during a day spent at home I wouldn’t usually.” “What have you been reading?” This conversation is unusual for us but I rather like it.

“On my last flight back to Boston I read a book called The Opposite of Loneliness. It’s a collection of short stories and essays written by a young girl, I found it rather interesting.” I omit the fact that the authoress had died young – death is not a subject that the two of us know how to approach and certainly not with one another.

Death is Richard, death is the loss we both feel yet cannot seem to share, death is something that I at my age am inevitably close to as well, yet that is a fact that Lorelai does not wish to acknowledge at all. 

“Sounds like a book Rory might like!” “I’ll lend it to her.” “And there she comes!” I turn my head and indeed Rory is walking up the sandy path from the beach just now.

Rory seems apprehensive, yet comes over to hug her mother and Lorelai returns the hug a little less stiffly than she did with me – though this is far from their usual kind of embrace. “Grandma is making pizza!” Rory gushes nervously. “So I’ve seen!” Lorelai says, comically pointing to both of her eyes with two fingers. “Otherwise I might not believe you!”

Thankfully, she leaves out any reference to Sophia Loren. “The pizza will be done very soon, Rory!” I tell her and she leaves us to freshen up inside. “There we go!” I say, putting the pizzas on six plates and gesturing for Lorelai to help me carry them back inside. We have to go twice in order to get them all but they smell delicious.

“These look amazing!” Lorelai agrees with my silent musings and I smile. “Will that convince you to try one with vegetables as well?” I tease. “That depends – I’ll start with pineapple and 4 kinds of cheese though. 4 kinds of cheese – that seems so Italian! Or French actually – you would know better than me.” “Feel free.”

Rory comes back and I serve them pizza and fresh orange juice. Lorelai does not complain about the lack of alcohol on offer and eating pizza seems to do as I hoped and make Lorelai feel happy and more calm.

I have decided that we should leave the heavier topics for later, so that everyone would be able to enjoy the food in peace, and it seems to work. We talk about Hope’s apartment in Paris and how Lorelai can barely imagine me, having coffee among an assortment of artists and strange characters in Montmartre, having nothing but baguette and cheese on the couch for dinner or frequenting the bars of Marais with my sister.

I laugh along for her benefit. Truthfully, I know longer care about keeping up appearances and there is nothing more fun than having wine and cheese, or coffee and croissants with my sister, be it in a dirty café, on a picnic blanket in the Jardin de Luxembourg or in her living room. I do not tell Lorelai that, though considered it.

We get back to talking about The Opposite of Loneliness. Rory, who says she has actually wanted to read the book for ages – with it being written by a fellow Yale alumna and all that – instinctively joins me in omitting the girl’s death from our narrative. 

Lorelai speaks of Luke and April, who is a highly skilled and intelligent girl now pursuing a Doctorate of Medicine at Columbia University, which, so Lorelai explains, also has finally brought her closer to Luke and herself geographically. I nod understandingly. 

“That’s lovely,” I tell her, while Rory seems a little uncomfortable with her stepsister’s big accomplishment, no doubt feeling the pressure of the inevitable comparison. I’m not sure whether Lorelai notices but I deftly change the subject once more.

“I hope April will be able to join us for Christmas! I know Nantucket can be a little quiet during the winter but there’s an ice rink in town and carriage rides, and we could go to Boston for the decorations, maybe a little shopping and the marvelous maple glazed ham they do at that little place – it’s served with all the trimmings, by the way.”

“That sounds fantastic!” I knew one could catch Lorelai with great food and Christmas lights, not to mention carriage rides. “We also hope that April will be able to join, but I think she will.” She smiles at me – my daughter actually smiles at me and it’s not a fake smile!

As I clear the plates, Rory looks at me rather apprehensively. “The Sophia Loren pizza was actually really good, Mom!” Lorelai praises. “I’ve never had it before but I enjoyed it a lot. Asparagus is one of the vegetables I like for the most part, and eggs on pizza – what a great invention!”

“I’m glad you liked it, Lorelai.” “The vegetable pizza was lovely, too, grandma,” Rory says. “And the sausage and the four cheeses… all of them really!” “Thank you, girls,” I leave them and return with two red velvet cakes. “Now, this one is just for you as promised, Lorelai!” If my daughter could possibly look more enthusiastic than she did while devouring the pizza, she does now. “Wow!”

I go back to the kitchen once more and return with tea and coffee – lavender tea for Rory like we usually have in the evening, and coffee for Lorelai and myself because I cannot possibly leave her without coffee, and she might feel equally insulted if Rory and I both had tea, thereby excluding her in a manner of speaking. 

And then finally, over coffee, tea and second slices of cake, we have at it. “How could you have an affair with a married man!” Lorelai shouts. “He’s not married, he’s engaged,” Rory corrects meekly.

“This is a pattern with you, after all you’re the girl who lost her virginity to a married man as well!” Lorelai yells. Rory looks at me in horror and I can’t manage to fully keep the look of shock from my face. “It seems that the only men who excite you are married men! When a man is not married but in fact in a relationship with you, you seem to lose interest!” my daughter keeps going, undeterred.


	6. Chapter 6

“Come home,” I told him the night he had rear-ended my car after having seen me speak to Simon McLane. While I had sniped at him on the car ride back home, I had been elated on the inside. I had never cared for McLane, had never even done as much as let him kiss me on the cheek, and to know that Richard had a sufficient amount of passion for me left to purposefully hit my car, was balm to at least some of the wounds on my soul, if not all of them.

To love a person that much is to easily be destroyed; to become someone that you were never meant to be, a woman whom you would no longer recognize 40 years down the road. It had happened to me – despite the fact that I had adored him and he had likewise adored me. It was nothing but a marriage based on love and mutual consideration.

The consideration left – that is what happened. While I am not without blame, I did dedicate my whole life to Richard. I was a dutiful wife and considered him in most of my actions and all of my decisions – until the day when I left him. That was the day I no longer thought of how my actions affected him, but I felt that he had brought us to that point.

The point, where I no longer had a choice. I have never been a woman who lets herself be dominated, devalued and completely disrespected. In a relationship and a long marriage especially, you will inevitably have to accept incidents of hurt and disappointment, there is simply no other way. People always wound one another, whether it be intentional or not – it is simply a part of the human condition. 

But there must be a limit to what is acceptable, and there certainly was for me. I accepted quite a lot of missed dinners, late nights at the office or in his study and forgotten anniversary dates. I have always been a sensitive women, though I have purposefully ascertained, throughout my life, that most people don’t notice that about me. 

I have no desire for people to know just how deeply I can be emotionally injured or the insecurities that sometimes haunt me. Having people know would make me even more vulnerable than experiencing these feelings by myself does. But Richard certainly knew – how could he not have? I let him in fully, showed him what I have never shown anyone but my sister and by the nature of our relationship, even some things that Hope does not know me. 

And yet, in the end he hurt me more deeply than anyone, except my mother, ever has. The point where I had to leave this marriage came after much heartache, disrespect and the repeated message that I was nothing but his property. I refuse to be anyone’s property, not even Richard’s, and thus came the point of – almost – no return.

I don’t believe he even understood why I left him at the time. I also think that he didn’t think me capable – which was part of the reason why it was necessary then, to break the relationship. If the other person in your marriage, the person who is supposed to be and act as your partner, believes that you are their commodity, their source of encouragement and bed warmer to do with as they please forever, the partnership has already been lost. 

He believed that I was his forever, to use and to speak his mind to, to stand beside him and have his back. But what about what I wanted? I had never had a career, because it simply was not done. I dedicated my life to my husband and daughter, only to see her leave and my husband arrive at the conclusion that my life was meaningless because it was only that of a wife.

He wanted me to be that wife, yet he no longer respected her. And if I was to be no longer respected, I was unwilling to play the role for a day longer. Much as I loved him, much as every day without him is haunted by sadness, I am and have always been more than Richard Gilmore’s wife.

I, too, am a person; I am a passionate woman, an intelligent woman, and I am certainly resourceful enough to make a life for myself, no matter where or under which circumstances. 

It is quite funny and ironic because for the longest time, the relationship that had hurt me the most in life was the one I had or rather did not have with my daughter. That changed the day that Richard put his business interests above our daughter. It was then that I knew that I finally was going to do what I had thought about during countless lonely evenings of reading lovely books that were always clouded by Richard’s absence.

The husband I was supposed to have and who no longer cared. The husband I would have given anything for, and who refused to give me even one night of talking to me, or listening to me, or kissing me for half an hour on the couch or the porch or in bed.

Perhaps time had soured even this, our relationship, I thought. I had never believed it possible but while I saw myself still loving him, adoring him and wishing to spend some time with him in simple ways such as having coffee together, eating Sunday lunch or going for a walk – and truly being present for once, he no longer cared. 

I remember the many mornings I spent having breakfast by myself at a big dining room table, in a huge empty room, wondering how I had ended up there as I cut up my daily omelet and poured too many cups of coffee for courage and a tiny bit of happiness.

I remember one day in particular when I simply could not take it anymore. The maid was waiting for me to arrive in the dining room, my breakfast keeping warm in the kitchen while the single white china plate and coffee cup stared at me in indignation, and just this once, I simply could not do it anymore.

I fired her on the spot because I could not stand her presence in my house anymore. It was not that I felt good there by myself after she had left, but I did feel a little bit more free. I would not have my breakfast there alone that day, I decided. I went upstairs, changed into a simple pair of dove grey slacks and a white blouse, swallowed my pride and drove to Lorelai’s house.

At her doorstep, she stared at me with a mixture of surprise and trepidation as I asked her if she wanted to have breakfast with me. “Saturdays are dedicated to breakfasts at Al’s Pancake World around here,” she told me, clearly expecting me to refuse breakfast at Al’s diner and perhaps even to leave in annoyance and disgust.

“Pancakes sound lovely,” I said and attempted a small smile. Her eyes widened but she ultimately shook herself out of her stupor, blindly grabbed for a handbag from the downstairs wardrobe and mouthed “Sure, let’s go” as she lead me back across the lawn.

We walked to Al’s Pancake World mostly in silence, leaving my BMW in Lorelai’s driveway but for once, I found that I minded neither of those things. Nor did I mind the jeans and ridiculous T-shirt Lorelai was wearing – if ugly clothes made her happy, so be it. 

Walking next to my daughter, who I knew hated me around 80% of the time, I suddenly felt less lonely than I had in more months than I cared to remember. At Al’s Pancake World, I ordered pancakes with strawberries and cream, thinking that I should be able to indulge just this once – obviously surprising Lorelai once more, who proceeded to ask whether aliens had kidnapped me and taken possession of my body.

I rolled my eyes at that, “If aliens had taken over my body, surely I would not be telling you, since I wouldn’t be me but some strange alien. And said alien would not wish to diverge that secret, now, would it?” “Good one, Mom,” Lorelai laughed. “Or E.T.,” she added with a wink.

I smiled at her antics that time – they were certainly more cheerful than my big, loveless house back in Hartford. I found that I had no wish to go back there, so Lorelai and I stayed at the pancake place until midday.

Almost wondrously, my daughter was amenable and did not attempt to rush me. We drank cup after cup of deliciously hot coffee, which I thought tasted even better than the one the maids or I myself prepared at home, and I told her I was thinking of going to Paris soon, to visit my sister.

“How is Aunt Hope?” she asked me, providing me with the opportunity to tell stories from my lovely sister’s life, instead of having to reflect on my own sad existence. “She’s very well,” I told her. “She’s dating an artist now – the woman is supposed to be incredibly talented and pretty. At least Hope claims her to be,” I winked at my daughter.

“That sounds nice,” Lorelai said. “It must be such fun – living in Paris, doing her own paintings, writing short stories, dating Parisians, visiting the Louvre every month, drinking wine…” She sounded more honest then than she usually did with me. “It does indeed,” this time I did not have to force a smile.

“Well, you’ll have to tell me about that lady she’s dating!” “I will.” “Good. Cool. We ended up being the ones with the boring lives in the family, huh?” I did not correct her, though I felt that Lorelai’s life was far from boring.

“Perhaps you’ll come along to Paris one day,” I said gently, cautiously. She nodded and though I did not allow myself to truly believe that she would, her nod made me happy that day.

I could not believe that Richard would put his business above our daughter – we had made her together, after all. On one of the bright, sun-drenched days of early July full of sweat, sundresses and iced teas, we had made that girl; we had had to put up such a big fight to finally conceive and keep a baby; we had celebrated her together delirious with joy, anticipation and love; and now I found that he did not value as much as I did.

It was one of the strangest and most devastating emotions that I have ever experienced – to know that my husband, the person I had been madly in love with ever since I was a young girl, the father to my daughter, appeared to love her less than I did.

And it was then that I realized that the one bond I had in life that truly could never be broken, was that with my child. Previously, I had thought that Richard and Hope were my only relationships that were forever and would remain. Well, it turned out that there were indeed things in the world that were too much for me to accept, even if it would have been for the sake of Richard.

But Lorelai, Lorelai was forever. No matter how many times she cut me with words or actions or pure disrespect. No matter if she left me and came to see me only 3 times a year or one time or never. Her I would always forgive, and try to make things better with, and go back to if only she invited me in.

Two weeks after eating pancakes with cream opposite my daughter, I left Richard and moved into a hotel. He did not even comprehend that I left him for Lorelai, I suppose, and neither did she. Not that I wanted her to know – one should never put that kind of burden on a child. But Richard – he should have known and he should have understood. He should have loved her as unconditionally as I did. He should have been ready to give up our house, our wealth and our standing for her, as I was.

I told him, as well, but he just never listened. It was as though I was invisible to him, except when he needed someone to tie his bow tie, listen to his rants or have meals next to when he finally deigned to appear for them.

“Come home,” I told him, in the end, because I truly could not bear to be without him, and I hoped that he had learnt something during our time apart. It also turned out that Lorelai had broken up with Jason, finding it unacceptable to remain in a relationship with someone who attempted to ruin her father’s business and reputation.

Not that this fact made Richard’s behavior any easier to swallow. She had shown him more love than he had her. It was the ugliest side to Richard that I had ever seen and when I invited him back in, I did so in the full knowledge that it existed, that I despised it, but this was the person I loved with all my hard and I could not erase it. I never accepted it, that side of his, but I accepted him back on the silent condition that he would never show it to Lorelai or myself again.

“Come home to me, please,” I told him because I had decided that I would have to swallow some of the ugly parts of our past relationship and try again, hoping that this time he would truly keep working along with me. I forgave him that night and he forgave me – a difficult feat for the both of us, and we embarked on something that felt a lot like the relationship we first began on a breeze of faith. Only more difficult and heavy, marked by the actual knowledge of what we had the potential to do to one another.

He held out his hand to me after I had told him to come back to me, I laid mine onto his palm and we interlaced our fingers. It was the first time I had touched his hand in many months and even longer since we had last engaged in the conscious act of hand holding – one in which he was mentally present and which he acknowledged as a show of deep affection as much as I did. 

It was still easy to hold his hand – it always had been, and even after all the hurt he had caused me, it seemed that I still trusted him to hold my hand and squeeze it, even if the act of trusting him with anything else was an arduous one. 

We walked into the sun room holding hands and carefully stealing glances at each other’s faces – I don’t know who had started walking or chosen the direction; I suppose we both did; we were still attuned in that sense. 

Once we had arrived in the sun room, he leaned down and kissed my mouth, his left hand was still intertwined with my right and I plunged my tongue into his mouth. 

Later I would have to explain to him that there had been nothing between myself and Simon McLane – no matter what he had done to me, I still owed him as much. I knew that for all his business trips and late nights at the office, there had never been another woman, not even when we had been separated – fidelity was never our issue. 

There are betrayals other than the physical that can seem impossible to overcome, however. Impossible until I decided to take my broken heart and give it another go. I would probably never love another man as I did him – I knew that when I left, too, but the passion that my dating someone else had elicited within Richard, gave me hope that perhaps he had found those lost emotions that tied him to me just as I was tied to him.

Emotions that went beyond convenience, habit and a listening ear. Something that could make him kiss me again with desire and reverence, single-mindedness and joy, just like he did in the sun room. Though I knew there would have to be more to come in order for us to regain a real partnership, it seemed like a fitting beginning.

I kissed him wildly, with a lot of tongue and teeth, because it had been months since I had had the chance to be inside his mouth and it seemed like years. I wanted him more than I hurt that evening. I could tell he was somewhat surprised by the manner in which I attacked his mouth – coming as it did, after I had left him, shut him out of my life and gone on a date with another man.

It was not as though I had never been wild but in between all the heartache, anger and ramming my car, it was clearly not what he had expected. But despite the fact that he had hit my car, I knew that he had never meant to hurt me, and he hadn’t. He had taken me to the hospital, showing more concern and care for my well-being than he had in years, assured I went through a thorough check-up and had driven me home slowly, during a ride filled with gentle gazes and whispered Are you sure you’re okays.

I was easy where he was concerned, I will admit it – I always have been. Did he understand that it did not take more than some genuine signs of love and passion, care and consideration for me to be willing to give him another chance? Those were all things that I had been deprived of and that I could not live without forever – I was just another human being at the end of the day, after all.

I bit his lip, he gently licked mine and I clawed my way underneath his shirt and tie, leaving angry red marks as I went along. “Is the maid here?” Richard finally gasped. “No, I don’t like for her to be here in the evenings.” Richard looked down at me, confusion evident on his reddened face.

It was the most words we had exchanged since we were back in the house together but I did not wish to explain that I hated having all these random people around at night – I wanted to exist in peace then at least. 

So I went back to simply kissing him with abandon, and he was distracted easily enough. I threw his crumpled jacket down on the floor, his tie and the black coat I was still wearing following. I pressed my chest to his and he took my hands back to hold and squeeze. The gesture brought a tear to my eye, but I did not want to cry right then and there. 

There would be plenty of time to cry about what he had done to me, what I had done to him, about whether he had truly learned and wished to treat me as his partner. To cry about the forgiveness that we may or may not gift one another with and try to overcome the hurt for – but not there in the sun room as I kissed him and wanted to make him mine again.

I did not even care about whether we did it right there or went upstairs. I bit his ear, he let go of my hands to press me closer to him and open the zipper of my dress, trailing his fingers down my bare back. The sun room it was then. I drew away slightly to step out of the dress, my shoes and panties. I proceeded to rip the crisp white shirt from his body, some of the buttons flying lose as I did so.

Haphazardly I grabbed some blankets and pillows from our surroundings, threw them on the floor, some of them landing on our pieces of clothing, and gestured for Richard to lay down. To his credit, he did as I asked for once, without hesitation, reluctance or doubt. I lay down on top of him, naked as I was by then, licked my way up from his chest to his chin and ear. “Fuck me,” I whispered.

It was not often that I used language like that but that night, I simply felt like it and any inhibitions I might have otherwise had, were long lost at that point. If he could rear-end my car and drag me home, I could order him to lay down on the floor and tell him to fuck me. 

He groaned against my chin, his breath moist and drunk with lust; his erection grew against my thigh and I turned my head to look into his eyes, a challenge clear in mine. He pressed his hands against my naked behind and I could feel myself growing ever wetter, my essence coating his pants but I did not care. I found that I did not care about anything much anymore – anything but having him close to me in the most intimate way possible, so that at least for an hour or so I could feel as though I was home again.


	7. Chapter 7

“This is a pattern with you, after all you’re the girl who lost her virginity to a married man as well!” Lorelai yells. Rory looks at me in horror and I can’t manage to fully keep the look of shock from my face. “It seems that the only men who excite you are married men! When a man is not married but in fact in a relationship with you, you seem to lose interest!” my daughter keeps going, undeterred.

“I get it from you!” this time Rory bites back. “Not the part about married men but the part about losing interest! That’s what always happened with you and your relationships!” “I… well,” Lorelai is well aware that this is not entirely untrue, though she hates for it to be pointed out – she always has. “At least they were not married!” she insists, gaining back some zeal.

“Engaged!” “Engaged to be married! And Dean was married.” “That was 13 years ago!” “Still, the fact remains that you lost her virginity to a married man and now you’re pregnant with a soon-to-be-married man’s child!” Rory looks contrite and remains quiet for the moment.

“Alright, Lorelai,” I finally say. “Perhaps we could stop discussing Rory’s first time? That’s a bit unfair and embarrassing, unless you want us to all chime in?”

“Pffft,” Lorelai huffs. “Everybody already knows who you and I lost our virginities to! There’s nothing to say.” “Is that so?” This conversation is absurd. “Of course! I lost my virginity to Christopher at the age of 16, everybody knows that, everybody! Rory is human proof of that. And you lost yours to Dad.”

“How would you know that? I’ve never talked to you about losing my virginity!” I insist. “Well, didn’t you?” “I did, but I never told you and you never asked.” “Pffft,” Lorelai makes again. “It’s quite obvious that Emily Gilmore would never have had sex with anyone but her husband!” “And yet you thought I had sex with Jack!” I just can’t let that one go, she was extremely cruel and hurtful when she was convinced I was dating Jack.

“Eww! I never said that.” “But you thought it, that’s why you treated me as though I had the plague! Or syphilis?” “Eww, Mom!” “Isn’t that the truth?” I can see Rory looking back and forth between us as though this is a tennis match. “I never thought you had syphilis!” “But you thought I had sex with Jack and you were angry about it!” “Yes, I was!” she yells.

“Yes, I was. Are you happy now?” “I’m not happy at all because who I have sex with is none of your business!” “But you just said that you didn’t have sex with Jack!” “That’s right.” “So did you have sex with somebody else?” “No!” “So!” “So?” “So you have only ever had sex with one person, my father. Which means that Rory cannot possibly get her slutty behavior from you, she must get it from me!”

“What on Earth?” I gasp. “Don’t call your daughter slutty!” “But she is!” Rory is close to tears. “Now,” I reach out and put a hand on Rory’s arm. “It’s alright dear, you’re not slutty!”

Lorelai laughs madly, “I never thought I would hear those words come out of my mother’s mouth.” We’re on a roll, as we have sometimes been in the past, but if I did not know better, I would think that my daughter must be extremely drunk.

“Lorelai, I think you know that when your father and I met, he was engaged to Pennilyn Lott.” “Maybe it’s you she gets it from after all!” “Yes, maybe it’s me. If it makes you feel better, let’s just say it’s because of me.”

“But grandma, you and grandpa didn’t even kiss until after he broke up with Pennilyn!” Rory chimes in. Lorelai looks at her daughter, astonished that she would be privy to such details, I suppose.

“You didn’t?” she’s looking at me now. I just shake my head. This revelation seems to throw her off balance for a minute. I’d like to tell her the story of how Richard and I met one day, I always imagined I would when she became a teenager and asked one day. But she never did ask. I’ll certainly tell her one day, it’s not just that I would genuinely like to share it with her, which I would, but I feel that she deserves to know. After all, it is her history too.

But not when she is like this, she wouldn’t care to listen and would only lash out if I attempted it now.

“Alright, let’s please stop discussing all of our sex lives now,” I try. “You just repeatedly said that you don’t have a sex life!” Lorelai keeps yelling. What on Earth? “I don’t, but once again, if it was so essential for you to know that, you could have just asked me.” “I should have asked if you were having sex with Jack? Cause that would have gone over really well.” “Maybe you could have phrased it differently, maybe you could have asked me if I was dating John!”

“Jack!” she corrects immediately. “Jack! Jack! Jack whom I did not even kiss on the fucking cheek!” I shout at her. Rory gasps. “So do you know everything you needed to know now?

She draws breath and on it goes – on and on, “You just said I could ask, then why are you so mad?” “Because you assumed! You did not ask, you just assumed that I was sleeping with Jack! Or kissing Jack or whatever! I felt like you didn’t know me at all. I loved your father. I loved loved loved your father, I couldn’t just sleep with another man!”

“Cause you’re not a slut like we are.” “Lorelai, are you crazy? That has nothing to do with it. It just happened that I did not have sex with anyone before I met your father. It was a different time, I was raised not to, I was obedient and truthfully, I had just never been keen. Then I met Richard, fell in love with him, knew that I wanted to sleep with him and I have just never wanted that with anybody else, okay? It just happened that way, it’s not because I am morally superior or living an ideal life.”

I take another deep breath, “That, however, does not mean that you or Rory have to live that way. I don’t expect it, I don’t demand it and will you please stop referring to yourselves as prostitutes? Because you’re not, neither of you are and it’s diminishing.” “But.. but..” Lorelai stumbles. “But you didn’t want me to have sex!”

“I didn’t want you to have sex when you were 16, yes, guilty as charged! However, as an adult you could do as you pleased.” “I did but it wasn’t even that fun!” “I’m very sorry to hear that, Lorelai.” She deflates at that, her shoulders slumping, “You did kind of have the ideal relationship though!” I’m surprised, “You think so?”

“Yes, I mean meeting the love of your life young, knowing you wanted to marry them, having them love you back, actually getting married, then having a child… and a marriage that lasted for 50 years. I mean, 50 years, wow!! And you still loved each other, not like those couples who are still together after 30, 40, 50 years but without the love. That’s a different thing too… But yours, yours was ideal.”

“I did not know you felt that way.” Hasn’t she tried everything to get away from us and our world? It seems that she has guessed my thoughts, “The fancy life wasn’t for me, you know that, but for the two of you, your relationship was perfection. It was just so you – two people merged in harmony.” 

“Lorelai,” I reach out and touch her cheek with my hand, despite knowing that I probably should not. “It wasn’t perfect but it was wonderful, yes. It’s just not so easy – he had the ability to hurt me more deeply than anyone else but he also had the ability to make me so happy.” I sigh, “It’s not about perfection or even fate, I think. We happened to fall in love with one another and then we decided to hold onto that. Many times.”

“When you were angry about Jack, I didn’t mind that so much as the fact that you assumed I had moved on just like that. You didn’t ask and also, you should know that I could never. In theory you have no right to be angry about my romantic life.” She glares at me. “In practice, however, I can’t find it in me to forbid you from interfering. Strange isn’t it?”

She stares at me, her face unmoving in my hand. “But you are us. The best of us, I like to think.” That is what finally breaks down her walls. She scrambles over, knocking down her chair in the process and finally gives me a hug like the ones she used to give me when she was a fierce little girl – exuberant and strong like vice. 

I can see Rory staring over Lorelai’s shoulder, she looks both astonished and sad. She has never seen us like that, she doesn’t know about the intimacy that we used to share. But Lorelai does, of course she does, even though she has refused to speak of it for a long time. As have I. 

We remain like that for a long while, until she proceeds to sit down on the floor, her head leaning lightly against my legs, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Rory is outside of her vision now; I reach for her hand. “I’m sorry,” she tells me. “I know.” “These were really inappropriate things to say to you.” “Well, I gave as good as I got.”

“Not quite,” she insists. “I think I’ve finally gone nuts,” she sags against me, tired and crushed. “It’ll be alright,” I tell her. “But what will we do?” “Rory will decide for herself and we’ll support her.” She nods against my legs but Rory can’t see her.

“Will you?” Rory asks. The question is directed at Lorelai, not myself. “Yes,” Lorelai mumbles.

“Yes,” she finally repeats more loudly. “Yes, we will.” “What about Logan?” “What about him?” “I’ll have to tell him,” Rory whispers but we can both hear her perfectly well. “Yeah,” Lorelai agrees. “I love him,” Rory says.

“If I tell you he isn’t good enough for you, that won’t change your mind, will it?” Lorelai asks weakly. “I can see why that’s your opinion but I can’t stop loving him because of that. It’s beyond my control.” “But what you do about it is within your control.”

“Of course. I know it was wrong to be with him behind Odette’s back, and I am sorry. I wouldn’t do that again, if I had the chance to go back in time. I’m not…” “I know,” Lorelai finally admits. “Who you are is not defined by the worst of your mistakes.” I nod quietly. 

Suddenly Lorelai starts laughing. “How did we get to the point where my mother seems to be accepting and understanding of everything and I am the bitch?” “I hope you are not implying that I am usually a bitch,” I chide gently. 

“No, but apparently you are now a woman who says fuck.” I chuckle, “I’ve known that word since before you were born.” “And used it?” “And used it… at times.” “I’ve finally let go of a lot of societal rules. They were rather… stifling.” “You don’t say,” Lorelai smiles and I laugh along with her. “I’ve also been spending a lot of time with my sister,” I chuckle.

“Perhaps that’s what we all should do – it seems to have done you a world of good. Maybe we should all just go off to Paris.” “You’re welcome to join me on one of my trips.” “That would be nice.” Her response is surprising. She seems genuine but most importantly, more peaceful. “What do you think, Rory?” “A girls’ trip to Paris? I’d like that.” “We could buy some French baby clothes,” I wink at my granddaughter.

“So you’re still in there somewhere,” Lorelai jokes. “Now, I believe we should finish that red velvet cake, don’t you think, girls?” “I don’t have enough strength to get up,” Lorelai complains from her place on the floor. “Can you hand me the cake?” She doesn’t think I will acquiesce but I do. For one thing, I enjoy surprising her with the unexpected; for another, I really don’t care.

It’s not proper but if they’ve finally made peace and I have maybe, just maybe gotten a little piece of my former relationship with my daughter back, what does it matter whether Lorelai prefers to eat her cake while sitting on my sunroom floor?

“There you go,” I hand her the plate. She gazes up at me. “Wow. Thank you. Luke doesn’t even allow me to eat on the floor.” “Well, as long as you’re not actually picking up food from the floor. That’s where I draw the line.” “So I’ll tell Luke that my mother thinks it’s okay to eat on the floor as long as it’s from plates.” “You do that. I wonder if he’ll believe you.” Lorelai snorts.

“Would you mind if I went up to bed?” Rory asks. “Not at all.” “You’ll need lots of sleep, honey,” Lorelai agrees. “When I was pregnant with you I slept about 12 hours per night, didn’t I?” “Ten maybe.” “Plus two when I got back from school. It’s a good thing, you’re not in school anymore!” 

Rory bends down to kiss both Lorelai and I on the cheek, when she’s at the door she turns around and gives me a relieved look that Lorelai doesn’t see. I wink at her. “Good night,” I say. 

And then we are alone, my daughter and I. Her head is still resting against my legs – we haven’t had such prolonged physical contact in a very long time but it’s lovely. I can only hope some of it will last. 

“Thank you, Mommy,” Lorelai murmurs. “For what?” I run my fingers through her dark hair – now colored, like mine. “For taking care of my baby.” “I didn’t want to take your place, I hope you don’t think that. I just wanted to help.” “I know.” “And perhaps it was easier for me to do because I am the grandmother, not the mother.”

“What do you mean?” “Grandmothers are more responsible for spoiling and coddling the children rather than disciplining them.” “Mhhh.” “Of course she’s no longer a child, but it tides over. And I also did it for you, Lorelai. You’ll want to see your grandchild grow up.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers again and this time I don’t tell her it’s alright. I can’t, that wound is far too deep and festering. I have forgiven her, as I would forgive her for anything – our bond is strange that way – but I cannot say that it’s alright.

“She’s been everything I couldn’t be for you and I’m glad. I’m glad you have that with her.” I let my fingers run through her curls again – hair like ebony, that’s the way it’s always been. “It’s not the same,” I tell her silently. “You’ll see once Rory’s child is born. It has been my great joy to be a grandmother and it will be equally joyful to become a great-grandmother to Rory’s child.”

“But you and I, it’s something different.” She has literally grown within me, she has shared my body and I knew her when nobody did. “I know it hasn’t been good for a long time but it has always been close. Hasn’t it?” I know she has to feel that, too. “We can hurt one another deeply, we can be angry or disappointed but the connection remains. Even when it’s a sad one.”

“We get one mother, usually, and you are my only child.” “Do you regret that?” “No, that’s not what I meant. You happen to be my only child. And it’s not as though you were not enough. As I said, you were Richard and I. But you are also something that is uniquely your own.”

I wipe away a tear and hope she doesn’t see. “I may not always understand you but you’ll always be the person who grew within me. The girl I was so excited to meet. The child that held my hand. Yes, you were also the child I lost but you always came back to me in the end. Even when you were angry or hated me, you always came back.” And for that, I am infinitely grateful.

“I never hated you.” “That means a lot to me,” I tell her. She would not have lied to me on the matter – not here and now, in this situation. Perhaps I did not fully turn into my mother after all. “I do love you, Lorelai. I do love you.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, a new chapter! :) Thank you so much for reading my imaginings of Emily's life and relationships! That makes me very happy :)

The air was crisp and tasted of salt. It was late August in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Richard had rented a marvelous house for the weekend and we had driven up in a car full of laughter and the coffee cups we had bought on the way. Richard had made fun of my coffee consumption but indulged me, nonetheless. 

He’d had a sandwich and a strawberry turnover along the way too, but I hadn’t. I was too nervous. Richard assured me that there was no need to worry, we would be staying in separate bedrooms and he would never ask me to sleep with him before marriage. Perhaps the scariest thing was that he did not have to ask me - I wanted it so much; desired him very much.

I knew that one should not, my mother had raised me not to. But truthfully, a lot of my friends at Smith were doing it, even though their families did not know. My mother would not have to know – I could not bear her knowing but it was not any of her business anyhow. My body was my own, my love was my own and it was not as though I was throwing myself at the next best boy who came around. 

Some of my friends had actually had sex with boys that they did not particularly care for and I did not judge them for it, but it was not something I could see myself doing. In fact, I had never wanted to sleep with anyone before I knew Richard. To be honest, the idea of one day having sex – in marriage, as one did – had sounded scary to me, and a little disgusting.

I had not known that I could actually want to touch a man’s penis, to let him touch me intimately and be overcome by the sensations that evoked.

I had never even taken a trip with someone other than my parents – no fun! –, my best friend Sweetie or my sister. To do so with Richard, my boyfriend and the fiancé I adored, was both incredibly exciting and nerve-wrecking.

I had never spent the night in the same house as him and even if we did not end up going any further than that after all, his face would be the last I’d see in the evening; we would have a late-night chat before going to sleep perhaps; and I would wake up to have breakfast on the seaside porch with him. Though we had never had any troubles chatting, I did not quite know what I would say to him on those occasions.

And if we did go further, as I hoped we would… well the thought of what I would say to him before going to sleep in bed next to him and waking up the same, was even more worrying. Again, I had never shared a bed with anyone but my sister or best friend and to share one naked, with the person I loved and, in that scenario, had just had sex with, would be new on every single level.

It would be a lovely adventure hopefully. Emotionally fulfilling and mentally calming – or so I imagined it to be. But at the same time I was scared to death – how could I not be? I was basically handing myself over – physically naked and emotionally vulnerable to the slightest negative remark.

I wanted to be with him, I so wanted, but there was a reason why I kept most people at arm’s length. I just did not feel comfortable being myself, my whole entire self, with most people, and at the same time, there was no way I could keep any sort of distance from the person for whom I was about to break the golden virginity rule. The person to whom I actually wanted to show myself naked, whom I expected to touch my breasts, my naked back, my belly button and my vagina.

It was such a crazy thought in and of itself. I’d never wished for that before, I’d never imagined something so intimate, wonderful, strange and revealing – well, I had but the idea of doing that with my faceless future husband had always been that of a chore. 

It had been a duty, something one simply could not escape as a wife – and neither was being a wife something I could easily escape. It was something one would hopefully not be asked to engage in too often, something that from the limited knowledge I had gathered from the people around me seemed pleasurable for the man but not a lady.

Men were simply built that way, many had told me, and while I had those girlfriends that genuinely enjoyed sex, who sneaked out of Smith for the pleasure of it, I had long come to terms with the fact that I did not seem to be built that way.

I did not consider them sluts or whores, far from it, but from my own personal feelings and wishes, I reasoned that I must have inherited my mother’s dislike of the act – which was palpable when she provided my sister and I with our limited sexual education: do not even think about doing it before marriage, you’ll sully yourself; after marriage do it whenever your husband demands it, for it is your duty as a wife to birth his children and see to his pleasure.

It was palpable in her facial expressions whenever my father touched her arm, her face or her hand – her whole body suddenly frozen like ice, her smiles forced and empty; in the way she preferred to sit next to my sister or myself instead of her husband at dinner tables, in concert halls or drawing room settees – especially on the latter.

When I met Richard, I marveled at just how much closeness I craved. I turned into a completely different person in many ways.

I was no longer my mother’s daughter but a girl who could imagine nothing better than sitting at tiny coffee shop tables with this boy for hours, our arms touching on the table or our hands intertwining beneath it as we chatted about everything in the world – our dreams of travels to Europe and Australia, our hopes and dreams for the future, our philosophies of life and our thoughts on how Kennedy would still change the country. 

I became a girl who could not stop kissing Richard outside my residence hall when he drove me home after dinner, even though all of my fellow students could see. It was nothing too risqué then – no tongue – but in the living room of the dormitory I shared with Sweetie and two other close friends, I did not even care about that. Or rather, I had stopped caring at some point that, in retrospect, I can no longer pinpoint.

I would even sit on his lap and let him kiss my neck. It was not as though those 3 girls would ever have been scandalized – they did the same things, and worse, - but for me to no longer care about the propriety of these things was a big step. I simply wanted too much – that is the only explanation I have for it now.

Thankfully, us girls would have never told on one another – we were a tight-knit circle of friendship and trust, girlhood, intimacy, exciting stories and questions. It was from them that I had first learnt that a woman might indeed enjoy intimacies and sexual intercourse.

It was Sweetie, in whom I had first seen what it meant for a girl to be deeply and irrevocably in love – the wondrousness of it, the hurt, the enthusiasm, the smile, the willingness to hand yourself over and the destruction if you were left, or left disappointed after all that. 

To me, or rather the girl I had by then become, the knowledge that Richard and I were in love was enough for me to sleep with him. I did not expect him to leave me – despite the fact that he had left Pennilyn Lott for me and all that they say about a man doing something once, then doing it twice – and even if he would, I found that no matter what happened, I did not want to live a life in which I had never had sex with Richard Gilmore.

He was the one person I wanted to sleep with, the only person I had ever wanted to sleep with; I already loved him beyond measure and should anything go wrong, I could at least live in the knowledge of what it was like to have him inside of me, to orgasm – hopefully – and to just generally merge my body with his.

I had not told Richard that I wanted to sleep with him that weekend in Rhode Island. On the one hand, I perhaps should have. After all, knowing what I wished to do had given me an opportunity to prepare that I had not granted him. But it just sounded so crude to say. “I want to sleep with you, Richard. I know you would never expect it of me before the wedding, and I adore you for it, but I want to. I want you so much.”

Wanting and saying were two very different sides of the same coin, though if I was going to engage in the act soon, I should probably try to become less squeamish in talking about it. After all, doing it was even more heady, exposing and risqué than merely talking about doing it.

Richard took me out for dinner in town that night – he had the freshly caught lobster, while I chose seabass and vegetables but could barely eat half of it. “Is everything alright, Emmy?” he asked me, having certainly noticed my uncharacteristic lack of food consumption during the whole day.

Yes, I just feel queasy, I thought. “Everything is fine, Richard,” I told him, holding out my hand to him as we walked back along the promenade. He reached for it and gave it a gentle but reassuring squeeze. In that moment, I knew that I was going to follow through. He loved me – his hand in mine said it all. I loved him and I wanted to sleep with him today. Tonight – I smiled gently.

“This whole day has been so wonderful,” I said as we continued walking. “I could not have asked for a more beautiful Friday!” “And you are sure you are alright?” he asked again. “Yes, Richard, I could hardly be any better.” My hand was a little sweaty but I decided to ignore the fact.

Back at the house, which was painted a lovely daisy white, Richard asked if I wanted to have another glass of wine. I had only had one with dinner and despite the lack of food, two glasses were still not enough to make me drunk. Enough to help me gain some courage, but not enough to make me ramble or stumble. Imagine how embarrassing that would have been!

We had the wine on the seaside porch. I had gotten my cardigan from inside the house while he had gotten the wine, he had his arm draped comfortably around my shoulders and we listened as the waves crashed against the shore. Has there ever been a better sound?

“Emmy,” he said, after we had sipped in silence for a while. “You know I don’t expect you to sleep with me tonight, right?” he whispered against my head, having quite the opposite effect. His breath on my skin made me shiver, the smell of salt and sand was suddenly quite heady. 

“That is not it, Richard.” I took a deep breath and pushed myself, “The truth is that I would very much like to.” He didn’t say anything for a minute but just kept breathing against the side of my head. I could tell I had surprised him; I just hoped he wouldn’t consider me a slut now.

“Really?” he finally said. “Yes. I know you don’t expect me to; truly, I know that… and I love you for it. But if you were amenable, I would very much like to.” “Tonight?” “Yes.” I moved out of his embrace a little, so that I could pull his face down and kiss him.

It was a kiss unlike any other we had shared beforehand, though some of those had also been rather passionate. I kissed him like I wanted to sleep with him and I honestly hadn’t known what that would be like until I did it. I took his face inside my hands while my body was filled with want and I found myself pouring all this foreign desire into his mouth.

My tongue sought his and I thought that in this moment I had well and truly found it – I had found my match, the person I wanted to spend my time with until we both dropped dead one far away day in the future. I felt calm yet excited; as though I finally knew who I was, yet that lost all its importance in who he was.

I didn’t know if I could trust him but I chose to nonetheless. It may sound funny that I had agreed to marry him without knowing whether I could trust him with all that I was, but in order to understand one would need to know that I trusted nobody< that way; I had simply never learnt how. 

But then and there that was no longer important; none of it was. I placed myself on his lap, which I had done before but this time it was a beginning, more than a joy in and of itself.   
“Are you certain, Emily?” he whispered into my left ear. “I am. Richard…” I drew back slightly and cupped his cheek in my right hand, the left one holding onto his neck. “That was rather difficult for me to say,” I attempted a smile but could imagine that it must have looked a bit tremulous.

I trusted him to understand that it was not my certainty that had been difficult to proclaim, but rather the confession that I wanted him so. But he seemed to comprehend, as he moved his mouth back to cover mine, kissing me with renewed vigor. I literally wanted to eat him up – it was a strange thought, but truthful nonetheless. I had to keep myself from laughing out loud.

I truly was Emily McEvoy no longer but rather Richard’s Emily. Already it had happened, no penetration or real sexual acts were necessary for that. No marriage certificate, no name change. I could not tell if he knew but it was just as well; I was ready to hand myself over – at the risk of being badly hurt or thrown away.

His mouth tasted like the lobster he had had, like Sauvignon Blanc and the endless coffee I had forced him into drinking. He leaned back slightly and I drew my hands up his arms. He was so much stronger than I – despite the fact that I was well-trained and more sporty than he – but I had never been afraid that he may use his physical force against me. It was not his way, and I always felt that my sharp tongue and quick wit were enough to hold my own. 

I had no idea what I was doing but for now, it did not appear all that hard. I licked the roof of his mouth and pressed my breasts against his upper body; the waves kept crashing against the shore and I just thought that perhaps I could become a wave too.

Our wine glasses stood on the small Parisian style table long forgotten, it was a mild August evening, the world was ours alone – no family, no friends, no studies and no social obligations. I stood up and summoning all the courage I had ever held in my heart, I held out my hand to him.

He took it with a smile, intertwined our fingers and while the fact was that he had some experience and I had none, I was not scared of that which he knew. I was afraid of who I might become, a wild person, wanton and out of control, but I chose to ignore that fear. 

We went back inside ever so slowly, I left my cardigan on the living room couch and led the way to the bedroom – mine. He took off my dress – magenta pink, sleeveless – and I myself the underwear. I wore a set that matched the dress – which I often did, even before there was anyone to see them – but of course I had made sure for the night.

It was awkward in the sense that I imagine these things always are, but it was also heady and deliciously decadent.

„Richard,“ I sighed, as I lay down on the bed and held out my hands. To be like that was exciting, exhilarating and though I had never thought of myself as a girl waiting for sex so she could begin a new chapter, this did appear like a beginning to something new.

It wasn’t as though I was offering myself up; I was allowing myself to be something else. Something that at the time, wasn’t always well regarded for a woman to be – a sexual being. Oh, who am I kidding? It was looked down upon, women were considered trollops for doing it outside of the “proper” space and even sometimes within.

Men wanted it and were allowed to indulge but if women indulged with them, they sullied themselves. Not that all the girls at Smith adhered to the fact and the rules, but if you did not, you had a reputation to lose. It was not that they did not care; it was that they wanted nonetheless and perhaps they were appropriately rebellious, I would venture to say.

I was being but a little rebellious by sleeping with Richard – we were engaged after all. But it was still something of a risk to take – a risk of which I was well aware, and which did not hold the same weight for him. Not at all. I’m not sure whether he understood that – probably not in all its intricacies. He would never have pressured me to do it and if I had been a proper lady and asked that we wait until marriage, he would have acquiesced without a second thought. It was the doing I now engaged in, the – if not offering oneself, then becoming sexual – that he must not have perceived in the same manner.

It was not just about being a virgin and “losing one’s virginity;” it was an act of trust towards him, with both my body and my reputation. I did it because I loved him but I also did it because I wanted so much.

He leaned over me, his weight resting on his elbows not myself, and I decided to just reach out and touch his penis, which was still covered by his underwear. It was warm and ever-growing, foreign but not uncomfortably so.

Courage, I told myself. You have it; perhaps you don’t need it but first times are always scary, so just go ahead and jump in. It was nice to hold him there, after a while. I was in power, yet I did not intend to abuse it. It was my call. I stroked him and I smiled at him.

He looked at me like he truly did desire me and all that I was. I thought it was crazy even then – to tie myself to somebody else in such a way, to be myself and let him see that which went beyond wit, quips, immaculate grades and the perfect smile. 

I was insecure about my body as all women are. Despite the fact that I was beautiful – but I can only recognize the beauty in retrospect. It is so many of our fates, but looking back, I do see it. Once the first of it has faded, you can see very well. Yet then I thought my legs were too short and my breasts too large.

It was not as though I let him see it, but some of the insecurity must have shone through. It would have been impossible not to. He kissed my cheek, my mouth, my shoulders and my stomach. He looked up, his chin resting on my belly-button and I gave him a nod. He kissed my most intimate part then – and it was strange at first, but ultimately incredibly fulfilling. 

I was filled up with pleasure to the very brim. I pressed my eyes closed and gave a pretty loud ‘Oh.’ So that was it. That was a part of it, and I felt old beyond my years and yes, loved. 

There was a sweetness to giving myself over like that, to trusting him so. The air was cold but it was comfortable in the heat of the moment rather than off-putting. I looked at his face – reddened cheeks, cool blue eyes – and he seemed perfect to keep; perfect to stay with; perfect to be happier than I had ever been.

I did not recognize the pain that would come with us then. And indeed it is lucky I did not. I was treasured then, I was exuberant and euphoric, full of ideas for and pictures of my imagined future.

The body went right along with all of that; I believed in being with him and perhaps that’s what made it so much like a comfortable breakfast in bed, indulgent and cozy. Like pancakes trenched in too much maple syrup and apples; and omelet with goat cheese, spinach and cherry tomatoes – decadent. It was what we would have in the morning – or at midday, really.

Still snuggled into the breezy blankets of a beach house and each other, me now a little ashamed of having my naked body seen in a way that I hadn’t been during the evening and at night.

With the end of a carefully blanketing, courageous night comes a bright and slightly embarrassing morning. But I did not regret what I had done. I had always wanted to be a good girl but it was over brunch food in bed at midday that I realized it would have been imprudent to marry someone that I had not slept with.

Not that sleeping together was all that tied us together but I suppose what happens in bed can be a sign. And if we had not been compatible there, if I had not truly wanted him there – I might have questioned the whole arrangement to be quite frank.

I had been taught that being a girl, being a woman meant that you put up with certain things, you made sacrifices and you spared a man’s emotions occasionally even when he did not spare your own. But I don’t think I would have been willing to go to bed with someone I did not desire or who did not make me feel – well, euphoric.

What is it to anyone, hearing an old woman tell of how she lost her virginity once upon a time? Probably nothing, nothing at all. I am writing all of this down for myself more than anything. Should I one day, in even older age, forget, it might be useful. But really, it is a form of therapy as well as a vindication to tell the story that is no one’s but mine.

Perhaps Lorelai, Rory or my future great-grandchild may find it interesting to read one day. Or not – I would like to think that I have made peace with all of that. 

So it was what it was. A salty, slightly cold night in August that for me, was filled with desire, clumsy hands – mine, and sweaty skin – mostly his but both of ours, really. It would be too intimate to share in real life, to speak of in all those details, to share and explain. But it is easy to write down because I can still remember it with all that I am if I truly concentrate.

I can still feel it in my body – a body that is no longer touched by anyone else, but I don’t regret that and I don’t wish it were otherwise. It is a woman’s thing, I sometimes think, because so often it truly is that way. There are exceptions, of course, but often widows choose to walk the rest of their paths alone – or with other people than a significant other – while men find someone else and remarry.

I am aware that I am a cliché in that sense, as I am in so many others. Laugh along with me; it is ironic but it is not sad. I am not sad. There has been headiness and there has been gentleness, there has been physical discovery and there has been love. I am quite content. It has been a melting of bodies, a reckoning for equality and a collaborative project.

There is Nantucket, there is Rhode Island, there is Hartford, there is Me; and I have got a lot left to do.

I remember Saturday afternoon, bathing together in the sea. It was a different meeting of bodies then. We had become more familiar with one another, certainly, but our actions were also more trusting somehow. I trusted him more. 

I wrapped my legs around his middle, my stomach pressed to his and he carried me around. We were alone in the water, with no one in sight at the beach either. I gladly shared this world with him – and him alone. I laughed out loud – too loud for a lady, and he smiled up at me, his face smeared with salt and my lipstick.

There was nothing else then. I adored him more than I had ever adored anyone in that moment. He seemed magical and I had tied myself to him – not just with my acceptance of his proposal but with my skin and soul. How trite, but I truly felt given. I had given myself away – or a part of myself, as I would later discover.

It was not a sacrifice then. Not at all. My bikini top and décolletage were wet but I did not feel cold. Esther Williams, Lorelai would have quipped. But she did not see us then, nor were we people that she would have recognized. Not truly. We were deliriously happy, I hugged his head to my chest and looked up at the sky.

There is nothing quite like a late summer in New England. The air is warm but weightless, the feeling of hugging somebody’s skin to your own is scrumptious.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And another one - hope you enjoy!

I sit in Business Class with Mom and Grandma on a flight from JFK to London Heathrow – the route that I’ve come to know so well. Too well, to be truthful. It’s been clandestine and self-indulgent; it’s been privileged purchases and hidden, immoral trips.

I have taken what was not mine to take and I’ve never been quite happy doing so, but I’ve been content at times. Content to steal a piece of Logan for myself – Logan, the man I’ve loved since I was 20 years old. Now I’m 33 and still a mess. More of a mess than I was back then, really.

It was he who brought it all out of order, my mother would say. He, who took my good girl, small town life and turned me into something much more lazy, much more greedy and self-obsessed. A beast of a kind, who hurts others without remorse and goes around sleeping with other people’s husbands as a habit. 

She’s not entirely wrong in thinking that I’ve become a beast; I have, but it would be much too simple to say that it was all his fault. When he fell in love with me, he found it exciting to date the good girl, the studious one – no doubt. But I do believe that he also saw something within me that my mother has refused to see in me – for all my life or however long it has existed.

She has, over time, blamed it on Grandma and Jess and Grandpa and Logan, but I am not as pure as to be able to blame all the worst aspects of my life on somebody else. Perhaps nobody is, but I certainly have not been in a very long time. 

Now, her animosity for Grandma has wavered, at least. There they sit, opposite me, my mother in the window seat, her head resting on Grandma’s shoulder and the two of them fast asleep. 

I enjoy watching them to be honest – there is something calming in the act. They are both larger than life and inexhaustibly witty, their strength eclipses mine and I can’t but think, as I look at their eyelids – closed and unguarded – that they have managed something that I have not.

They have made lives for themselves – Mom a lovely, fun and boisterous one in Stars Hollow that she has filled with friends, a business built from scratch and a reliable love, at last. And Grandma has even made two – a dignified, elegant one in Hartford, in which she was the second half of a husband she adored, and Queen of Charity and Committees; and then a quiet, comforting one in Nantucket, in which she lectures on history, learns foreign languages and how to cook; goes for walks on the beach on every day of the week.

I have shared that life gladly, easily and at times even wished that I’d never have to live. She would have let me stay, of course, but it has never been mine to inhabit fully. It was another way for me to put off the inevitable – pleasant, dream-like but ultimately impossible to hold on to. I am not a 74-year-old woman seeking peace, who has nothing left to prove to anyone but herself.

And what does it say about me that sometimes I wish that I was? Well, it only further proves what an unbelievably huge mess I am. 

She may not always have been a good mother but watching her, there has never been any doubt to me that she loves my mother very much. I wonder if I am even capable of that kind of love – unconditional and endless, existing in a space that has nothing to do with yourself, only with this other being. This child that I did not wish for, who I never truly wanted to go away – though I considered it – and to whom I am now everything.

I am the only other human being the baby has, as it resides within me, and I will probably be the most important one in its life during the first few years on Earth. That’s how it goes with babies, doesn’t it?

In all of that, they are indeed calming – a mother and daughter reunited; two marvelous women who never seem to have thought ‘Do I actually love this baby?’ when they were pregnant. That’s what unites them – if in nothing but my own mind and thoughts.

Despite the fact that my mother was only 16 when she had me and there was much that my grandmother was unable to give as my mother grew older, they never thought ‘Do I love her?’ as babies lived inside their bellies – gently beloved and inspiring sweet nightly dreams of children’s laughter and doll houses, not nightmares in which I stare at a red baby with a crumpled-up face, listen to ear-piercing cries and know that I simply cannot be what it needs me to be.

I’m not even sure if I have ever loved anyone properly. I seem to hurt people, I seem to cheat on people, to lie to people and only think of myself. Isn’t that what I am doing now, once again? 

They’re sweet like this, even individually they would be. For two such quick-witted, loud and headstrong women they look infinitely quiet, exuding a bright peacefulness that I’m not sure even they comprehend. 

With their heads so close together also comes the startling realization that their lips are the same natural shade of pink and their facial expressions mirror each other when they let go of everything that holds them together during the day. 

I wonder if the peace between them will keep – I cannot but wonder after a lifetime with the two but there is an intimacy there now that I did not know existed. It seems like an old bond, however, so they must always have had it. 

When was it lost, though? At age 1 or 3 or 7 or 10? I have not wanted to ask Mom for fear that she would recoil again at its very mention. I have not wanted to ask Grandma for fear of being a reminder of hurt. 

There they are, the seat next to me is empty and it should have been Grandpa’s, I think. He would have been happy, witnessing them together in peace. Perhaps he would have watched them sleep alongside me and ordered coffee for the two of us, corrected himself when he realized I shouldn’t have had any. Tea it would have been then, tea with milk and honey from one of those little packages. 

“Flights to Europe are tedious but there is no city quite like London,” he might have said. “Your grandmother has always preferred Paris, so don’t tell her I said that,” he would have winked despite her proximity. Because of her proximity, he would have been quite content for her to overhear and proceed to list 20 marvelous facts about Paris, when it was really her sister she adored, not the city per se. He would have known all that, of course.

He knew her better than anyone and I cannot but think that it was a beyond wonderful thing to have. Yes, she gave up on a career and other pursuits for him, but that was the times. And what they had goes so far beyond my flailing career or a successful career or Grandpa’s professional success, that the thought of it almost makes me cry.

They had one another. They had one another and perhaps I should have married Logan when he asked, gone to California and had the same. Or something similar, at least – my grandparents are quite unique. Or they were – they were.

Grandma bought the second seat for me so that I could lay down and sleep, but I find that sleep is elusive tonight. It is no surprise really; I am going to London to tell Logan I am pregnant and that I love him. 

It will be a cold day in January when we leave the plane. In contrast to New England, there probably won’t be snow in England, but there’ll be wind and dreariness. Not that I dislike London, but London has become Odette. While London used to be clandestine meetings, cottage pie for lunch and visits to the V&A while I waited for London to get off work, it has now become Odette.

Yes, of course it has always been; I just refused to see it, to consider it and leave those two where they belonged. While neither of them had been born in the country, Odette and Logan belonged to London, while I, Rory Gilmore belonged to New Haven or Stars Hollow, Hartford or Nantucket, Madrid or New York City but certainly not England.

“Madrid,” I would tell Grandpa as we watched his wife and daughter sleep. “My favorite European city is Madrid.” “What a wonderful choice. I’ve always been partial to paella and the Museo del Prado myself.”

If he’d been with us on this trip, he would probably have marched right into Logan’s London office and demanded that he marry me. Mom would have shrugged and said, “He’s your grandfather.” And Grandma – Grandma would have probably run for a heat pillow. I chuckle silently.

The night outside is dark and lonely; I am not alone but in some ways I also am. I am grateful that Mom and Grandma are accompanying me to London – not that Grandma could have been convinced that pregnant women can and do get on flights by themselves all the time, in any case – but ultimately I am this child’s mother.

It may or may not get a father; an absent father, an involved father, a married-to-your-mother father, but the fact remains that it lives within me and will be dependent on me for so many things. 

Grandma opens her eyes and blinks. She looks younger than she has in a long time – she may have made sure that I ate plenty, but in turn, I think she has inadvertently also eaten more than she did when she was by herself. 

She smiles at me as though the baby is a secret that only us three Gilmore Girls are sharing, despite the fact that it’s certainly very obvious by now. She looks happy and, glancing down at my mother out of the corner of her eye, she also looks as though it’s the best thing in the world to be a mother. I wish I could cut off a piece of that for myself – from her or my Mom or Lane or the woman with the 5-year-old twins we saw at the airport.

“Are you alright?” Grandma mouths. I nod and give her the smile of a granddaughter instead of the look of fear of an impending mother. They are both parts of myself now but I am childish enough to want to remain within the easy comfort of being a granddaughter for a little while longer.

“Aren’t you tired?” Grandma whispers. I am about to cry but don’t want to ruin her little slice of happiness, so I just nod, move the pillows and cover myself with British Airways’ soft grey blanket. I take one more look at the gentle but foreboding darkness of the sky before I close my eyes.

“Will you sleep some more also?” I ask, keeping my voice as low as I can. “I will,” her voice is soft but scratchy; deep as it always is but to me, in this situation, a lullaby.

I can feel her watching me as I snuggle further into the blanket and try to let go of the reality of being on my way to Logan, Odette and the making or breaking of the only passionate love story I have ever known. Not yours to keep, I remind myself. Think of something else, something, anything else.

My mother and my grandmother are what they have never been throughout my lifetime. I hold onto that like a lifeline. They know how to love – perhaps, at last, they know. Though of course Grandma has always known how to love Grandpa, and Mom has known how to love me and Sookie and later Luke. And Grandma has loved Hope and Sweetie, too.

It was one another that they never knew how to love, though they were always strung together anyhow – that has always been so clear. They have always had something other –something other than my father and I had, for instance.

We did not know how to love one another, but we were not inevitably tied together either. Not in that – we are so foreign to one another, yet you can hurt me deeper than anyone else can and when you’re hurting, I’ll come running to try and console you, yet I don’t know how – way. When we were foreign, we were foreign and that was that. 

I can imagine Emily, with her arm still around Mom, going back to sleep as my own mind keeps rolling incessantly. And this is what they are now – two people who can sleep next to one another in peace, even as they’re sitting on a plane on their way to London. 

Mom has never even been to Europe with her mother ever since she was a child. And yet, it has not turned into another big fight so far. Grandma booked us into Business Class instead of First Class since she thought that Mom might prefer that; Mom drank the tomato juice that Grandma ordered for the three of us without complaint, and Grandma had handed her complimentary chocolates over to Mom like one might to a child.

It was a very strange dynamic, I thought, but endearing nonetheless. At the airport, they people-watched while I attempted to squeeze in a few hundred words of writing, commented in tandem and laughed uproariously at the man who had man-spread next to a backpacking college girl and ended up with a kicked butt.

“I’ve never backpacked in my life.” Grandma said. “We should totally remedy that!” “Where would you have me go?” there was a teasing lilt to Grandma’s voice. “Oh, I don’t know. Lisbon? Stockholm? Marrakesh?”

”Alright.” “What?” “Alright, we’ll go.” 

“Are you kidding me?” “Why would I?” “You’d go backpacking with me?” “Why not? Plus, I really should have the experience at least once in my life, shouldn’t I?” “Yes?”

“It’s settled then. … If you really want to, that is.” “I’ll hold you to it – Rory is my witness.” My eyes bulged behind my computer screen. 

I’m scared out of my mind, my hands are trembling but worse than that, so are my innards. Grandma is convinced that Logan will choose me over Odette because Grandpa chose her over Pennilyn Lott, but perhaps Odette is the Emily of this story. She’s got her grace, her elegance and is willing to be a corporate wife.

Not that I told Grandma that – it would have been rude and the Emily of today is no longer a corporate wife either. Though she says that she regrets nothing and those were the times, I don’t believe she would become one again, if she had the choice. She and Grandpa could have learnt a different way – Grandpa could have. 

He wanted a career for Mom and myself, after all – it would not have been completely out of character, surely, to want one for his wife too, if it was what she wanted. If she had been adamant and he thought carefully about what it meant to be a woman in this world, or a man, a husband and a partner. 

Mom is still discontent with the idea of my stealing someone else’s husband, of course she is. None of us are perfect but she would never have had an affair with a married man. Neither would Grandma, and I must live with the shame of that, at the end of the day. The shame of being the most immoral one of the family, and the most egotistical. I can only attempt to do better.

We are at St Pancras station now, and Mom and Grandma are about to get on the Eurostar to Paris. There they are, coffee cups in hand, wearing strangely matching white trainers – though Mom’s are Adidas and Grandma’s Gucci – and expertly curled brown hair. Me too, actually – well, the hair; I am wearing ankle boots.

We look like the family I always wished for us to be – three generations of women with the same brown hair and curling-iron curls; laughing together; the very same expressions on our faces sometimes. Why can I not fully enjoy it now then? Because the fourth Gilmore girl – or Gilmore boy – is residing within my belly, their mom would either be loved or lost by the end of the day and I – I can no longer feel myself quite clearly.

I hoped that writing the novel would clear my emotions, thoughts and goals; it has helped, indeed, but in so many ways I remain confused, sad and lost – whether I am in an actual foreign land or back home in Stars Hollow or Nantucket.

What is home anyhow? Nantucket has become home simply because Grandma is there – I had never even been to the island before she moved there, and yet it has become a place of comfort and familiarity.

Going to sleep at night in Nantucket is like going to sleep in Stars Hollow – I know for a fact that I am safer than anywhere else there, I can close my eyes and let go of the unanswered questions that swirl through my mind during the day; I can simply be without others’ expectations or my own. 

But now it is time for me to face the music. Mom and Grandma would stay if I asked them, but I feel that is not for me to ask. They would even offer, if they did not consider it overbearing – a decision apparently reached in tandem, for once – but it is not about that either. My situation will not get better; I will not improve if I keep hiding behind their skirts like a kindergarten child.

My child deserves better than another child for a mother and while they’ll no doubt help, and I’ll gladly take them up on it, this task is mine to complete. My love life is not for them to fix. And when there was something for them to fix, with Grandpa or Luke, they would never have expected someone else to do the job either. They are much more fierce that way, but I’ll take the example.

“Do you have everything you need?” Mom asks. “Yeah, I do, thanks. You two have a blast in Paris!” “Say hello to Aunt Hope for me.”

“If anything goes wrong and you need us, just take the train to Paris,” Grandma says. 

Yesterday, during our girl’s day out in London, we went to stand in front of Buckingham Palace like stereotypical American tourists, there was high tea for Grandma, Covent Garden for me and Grandma patiently took 200 pictures of Mom at Madame Tussaud’s. It was a fun time, but now there is no time or reason for procrastination left.  
g  
“Will there be crepes in Paris?” Mom asks Grandma in a sing-song voice. “Sure,” Grandma laughs. “Will there be crepes and pommes duchesses and French skirts and Amelie and the Hunchback of Notre Dame?” 

Grandma says nothing but takes Mom by the arm and starts dragging her towards the security check gently. “They’ll never let us through, if you keep behaving like a madwoman,” she would have said years ago. “Now keep quiet before they call the police and take you to the station for a psychiatric evaluation.”

I roll my eyes at Mom’s behavior and smile after them as they walk away. Now for love or heartbreak, and parenthood. I feel lonely as I leave St Pancras, lonely but also infinitely blessed. They are mine to come back to, aren’t they?

And they have finally become what I believe they were always meant to be in the first place. The way I’ve described the characters they inspired in my novel – strong but loving, exasperated and exasperating, filled with empathy for one another where someone else might not understand. They are an inspiration; they cry and shout with such honesty.


	10. Chapter 10

There have been many kisses over the years. Kisses that tasted of vodka and lemon sorbet, of green beans and roast beef, of white wine and apricot brandy. Kisses of butter and lipstick and post-tennis sweat and morning breath. Enough kisses to last a lifetime, I must admit – I have many girlfriends who have experienced far less passion throughout their lives and marriages much less affectionate – and yet I feel bereft. 

It is not often that I talk about the fact. It seems inappropriate and awkward to discuss with Lorelai or Rory and Sweetie left me even before Richard did. So only Hope remains – a sister to tell how I miss kissing Richard more than the act itself. There is no sense in finding somebody else to kiss because once you have found that which suits you perfectly, there is no sense in going back.

Anyhow, it’s not as though I cannot live without kissing anyone – one easily can; it is the sharing of intimacy and closeness with one specific person that I miss. There is no compensation, no replacement, no second chapter for me.

There were many times I watched Richard sleep next to me in bed. After his second heart attack, when I knew there was likely to be a third one at some point – whether soon or years ahead – and there was basically no chance of surviving that. Having survived two was a miracle already. We had been so lucky; and nobody gets everything in life. 

I would watch him in that shared bed, that would be so difficult to let go of after his death but equally impossible to sleep in, and I thought of all the things I never said to him. Like Richard, I know that I will not go first. I know that I will spend years without you, perhaps even a decade or two.

Like Richard, do you realize all that I gave up for you? Dreams and independence and a whole other Emily? No, I do not regret it; and I would do it over and over again, but could you just say yes, I acknowledge that that is something you did. A sacrifice, a compromise, and I appreciate it, Emily. I appreciate it.

Like Richard, haven’t we been mad people ever since we were thrown together as two? Haven’t we yelled at each other with greater annoyance than should live within two lovers, and haven’t we kissed and clung to each other beyond the reasonable? Have we been co-dependent, have we been crazy, have we been stuck together to the detriment of ourselves or simply madly in love?

There are no clear borders for any of those things, just like there are no borders left in one’s mind when one is looking at the husband one might soon lose in bed and contemplates all that has been and what one would regret not having done or said if the day came soon.

I took him apple picking in autumn, throwing some of the fruit at him as though I was a crazy old woman pretending to be 17. Maybe I wished I had known him at 17 already, that I had known that a third person in this world could love me, that I was not going to be alone and that being married was going to be like tennis doubles, not the ghost house I had feared.

I forced him to make apple tarts with me afterwards, though I did not force him to kiss my cheek on the apple farm – he did that out of his own volition, as he always had. I should consider myself fortunate that for 50 years I was a woman, whose husband gladly kissed her cheek. A husband, who never lost the joy in that, at least for no longer than a couple of weeks at a time. 

I like to remember his kiss on my cheek during that Connecticut autumn in old age, as I like to think of it. My cheek was cold but reddened; his lips were too. I put my hand on his on the car ride home, it was a simple joy. At some point, I had to turn my face because I couldn’t force a tear to stay hidden within my eye. 

I rested my forehead against the cold window glass as my husband drove. I closed my eyes, our hands stayed connected, and there it was again: that thought from a long time past. BMW, VW or a Japanese car, what did it really matter at the end of the day? 

I don’t know that he knew what I was doing, but he probably did. 

Something else, I thought, something big. Something we had always talked about but never gotten around to because there were so many unimportant things that swept in and took its place. We’d been to many places but… Madrid, I thought. “Richard,” I said. “Let’s go to Madrid.”

He was crazy enough to indulge me and perhaps there is no other reason for it than the fact he knew, too. “Yes, Emily. Madrid,” he said. “Why not?” By then he was retired from the firm and only teaching one class per week at Yale. It was easily done; we both had the time; we’d always had the money; and truthfully, the physical ability to do many things was running out.

We had to do it while it was still possible, I felt; I wanted there to be no regrets in the end. No Richard and I should have or Why didn’t we?

Madrid. Though it was not our last trip, it felt like a reversal of the honeymoon we’d been on so long ago. Then it had been Cassis. Europe; two neighboring countries – France and Spain – but that was not the reason. 

Our honeymoon had been the obvious beginning; a tradition, an imagining of what was to come, when everything seemed possible and I did not doubt that the whole marriage was going to be happy, that we were going to have at least two or three children and they were going to love us back.

Madrid was not precisely a reckoning, but at times I could not but reflect. He was still well enough to participate in most things we’d dreamed up for the city, but the fact that the end was near was palpable, was undeniable and thick like the sea breeze in Rhode Island once upon a time.

Whether it be in 2 years or 5, 7 or 10, the end was near and I was still unwilling to let go – to let him go; to accept that I would be alone once more and this time with the failure I’d been as a mother and a grandmother squarely upon my shoulders. There would be nobody left but Hope, an ocean away, and in that sense it was going to be a first time. 

For the first time in my life I was going to be well and truly alone and I did not know what to make of it. Independence and freedom were all very well, but I would be bereft. I did not know how to build myself a companionable life out of thin air, and I did not know how to be lonely.

But there he still was, walking the streets of Madrid slowly by my side, sitting opposite me in restaurants serving dishes I’d never had, looking at museums and palaces with the glasses I kept in my purse next to mine. And I breathed him in – like the addict that I was. I breathed him in, and I looked at him, and I wished we could experience it all right then and there.

Truth be told, we had experienced a lot already, we had been very fortunate; and there he was, wordlessly granting me these wishes whose reason I never verbally expressed; and wishing right along with me, it seemed.

I kissed him on the mouth right in front of the Museo del Prado, which was out of character for me, because it was more than just a little peck and very public. But I had stopped caring already, in so many ways. We did not know any of these people anyhow, and even if we had, what did they matter?

Nobody else mattered when I knew I was going to lose Richard, when I knew that his health was flailing and time was more precious than it had ever been. There were so many instances when I could barely keep myself from crying, but this trip was not to be a sob fest; it was to be one of our final gifts to one another.

I remember the day when Lorelai called, out of the blue as she had taken to sometimes doing – because she too must have known, at that point. Known that time was precious, that she would not have her parents waiting around in Hartford forever and certainly not Richard. Known from the love she had once lost and gained back again, that anyone you loved and who loved you back was the very last thing to be taken for granted, the very last thing in life to be ignored.

We were seated outside a café in the warmth of early autumn drinking coffee – Richard with lots of milk and I black – when my cell phone rang and I picked it up right away because this was not a fancy restaurant and everyone around us was loud.

“What are you doing, Mom? How is Dad? Do you like Madrid?” she asked all at once. “We’re sitting in the outdoors area of a café, drinking coffee and it’s just so mild and warm,” for once I smiled while chatting to my daughter.

She would have had to have been quite rude in order to bring me out of the mood I was in – in love with my husband and mellowed by the climate and the knowledge of being on holiday, far away from the constraints of home. Thankfully she was not.

“That’s nice, Mom. Are you both doing well?” “We’re both doing well,” I assured her, though well was relative when somebody’s health was as seriously affected as Richard’s, and she knew that too. Well meant that my health was good as always; well meant that for Richard, another heart attack or anything similar did not seem imminent.

“That’s great, really great,” she said softly and appeared to mean it. “Are you enjoying Madrid?” she went back to her original line of questioning. “Very much so,” I could honestly say. “It is a lovely city.”

It was a lovely city, and a lovely place to see together with Richard; he’d been twice before. It was a city to fall in love with when you were in love and a wonderful city to breathe in.

It was the perfect city to distract from death and to cling to another human being in. 

“Is the coffee good?” Lorelai predictably wanted to know. “Very, I’m having it black.” She laughed at that – lovely and free; it sounded more like the laughter of the young girl she had once been than that of a woman in her forties, which she now was. 

“I’ll have to go at some point then.” “You really should. Maybe Luke would enjoy it, too.” It was not an overly pretentious city, after all. “You know he doesn’t like to travel…” That was rather deep for us and I clung to my coffee cup firmly with the hand that wasn’t holding the cell phone, determined not to mess up the opportunity. 

“Well, you can be rather convincing.” “Mother!” “Oh my God! That’s not at all what I meant, and you know it! I meant that you come up with lots of arguments when you want something, and you can talk people into things. It’s a gift,” I chuckled.

“I was only teasing!” “I’m relieved to hear it. Do you want Spanish candy, should I bring you some? Or something else?” “Candy sounds great. Or maybe chocolate…” “Candy and chocolate, got it!” I wanted to say that she was easy to buy souvenirs for but kept quiet – she might have felt offended. Who knew with my girl?

“Thank you,” her voice was soft again, honestly grateful and I took a deep breath. There could be no better moment in life for me than one in which I still had my husband, in which he sat close to me and listened with interest as I had a conversation on the phone with our daughter, as Lorelai seemed genuinely thankful and lovely; as I felt connected to and loved by both of them.

There was nothing better and while I knew that it would not always remain this way, that I could not hold on to it, no matter how much force I used or how much I wanted to, the pure moment was bliss.

“Say hello to Dad for me,” Lorelai said. “I will.” “Take care!” “You as well!”

She really seemed to care deeply for us in that moment; she wanted us well, she wanted us healthy and perhaps even back home with her soon. The thought was marvelous and shot through my veins like warm, molten chocolate. 

“Shall we?” Richard said, leaving money and extending his hand for mine. I put it in his readily and off we walked, as though we were teenagers or newlyweds, holding hands in a foreign city and silently promising never to let go.

It was ridiculous, really, but I loved him so. Holding on and breathing could never be enough, it could never last long enough. If 50 years with him had not been enough, no amount of decades could possibly be. But things had also changed greatly. We knew that our time as a couple was limited now, and it was perhaps that which made us so over the top, madly in love in Madrid.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he whispered into my ear as we walked. “Very much so,” I echoed what I had told Lorelai on the phone already. “So am I, so am I.” I clung on to that kind of life with my hand, I know I did. 

When I kissed him in front of the Museo del Prado, I was no longer me and more of myself than I had ever been. It was quite inappropriate, but who cared? The people of Madrid did not seem to, and neither did the tourists. 

It was a long kiss, five minutes or so, as we breathed through our noses and refused to let go. I had to wipe a lot of lipstick off of his mouth and chin when it ended, but he did not complain. I am not usually so passionately demonstrative right in front of other people.

It was nice; it tasted of sugary pastries, lemony water and my Chanel lipstick. It was warm like the air that surrounded us and endless in the sense that the feeling within us did not have to end when the kiss did. Being together like that was more important than the restraints of his health.

What did it matter if we could do less in a day than we once would have, had to sit down in cafés more often, had to have more water and fish? What mattered was that we stole this time for ourselves; stole it from destiny and the cruelty of loss.

Back home we went to New York City, to Rhode Island, to Vermont and over the border to Nova Scotia. I got him to sing our favorite songs from the 60s with me, to paint landscapes and have dinner at the Dragonfly Inn with Lorelai and Rory, to walk through Stars Hollow at Sunset as Lorelai made strange jokes, and the girls laughed too much and too loudly.

The two of us simply smiled; it was a simple evening, that one, but I felt content – content and melancholy and as though I’d never had enough, but ultimately happy. As he drove me home afterwards – our habit – I thought of how I would have to take over that duty at some point, of how I didn’t really mind and the pumpkins we’d seen in Stars Hollow.

Pumpkin soup, I thought. We’ll have cream of pumpkin soup with roasted pumpkin seeds and another slice of autumn. And we might still have winter after that and, if we were really, really lucky, another autumn next year.

We did.

I said that we should go to Beaver Creek that winter. Not to ski, though I myself may have still managed to, but just to walk and look at the snow and soak in the hot tub.

“I’m jealous,” Lorelai said. She’d always loved snow. 

But in Beaver Creek it was just the two of us, snowed-in cabins and lovely seasonal lights. I looked up at Richard and fixed his hat as we went for our winter walks. He could still walk far enough, and I was grateful. We ate fondue and he stroked my cheek out of nowhere as we did. 

Really inappropriate! To touch like that during dinner, but there we were and I loved him more than I had the young boy. I loved him like someone who thoroughly knew him; like someone who had been deeply hurt by him but still chose to be here. That was it exactly – at that point we truly chose to be there, to let other people fade away and look at each other for what we were. Old now, but somehow well suited. 

And as his health failed, I spent a lot of time crying by myself, but I also spent all of that time with him. We were not meant to be without the other, yet I was going to be, yet I was not in those moments. I was afraid but I also just breathed, I just laughed with him and touched him. I listened and smiled as he insisted, “Emily, you’re beautiful.”


End file.
